Monkey Grip

by Helen Garner

  ‘Nora. What are you up to?’

  ‘I’ve just had a huge snort of coke,’ I cheerfully announced.

  ‘Ooh, you lucky thing! Haven’t got any more, have you?’

  ‘No,’ I lied, sitting there in her room with an envelope of it in my back pocket.

  What’s happening to me?

  But, as if in revenge for my greed, as I left her house the coke turned around, gave a twist and a wriggle, and fled away, dumping me unceremoniously in a limbo, skew-whiff and desolate. I drifted through the rest of the afternoon in a puzzled dream.

  And when I came home I decided not to waste another snort, but to wait till my body was clear. I sat down at the table to transfer the coke to an uncrushed wrapper, and idly sniffed up the residue as I worked. How thoughtlessly you can persuade yourself that what you’re doing at any particular moment is not actually getting into dope, or eating, or smoking, or whatever it is you’ve rationally decided not to do; that it’s just a small aberration, or to make sure something is not wasted – or it’s not anything at all because your mind has slipped its moorings, disconnected itself for that moment from your body. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

  So! I shortly found myself feeling fantastic, and went on feeling that way till ten o’clock, when I got into bed and fell asleep. I dreamed that I opened up a cut I had in waking life in the biggest finger of my right hand, and took out a shining white fish-bone, three quarters of an inch long.

  Trouble.

  Javo the monster. I don’t know him when he’s like this. I wish he would go away. He barely gives me the time of day. He blunders into my room at night, drops his great boots from waist height and crawls into bed beside me. This is not Javo. I know he doesn’t care, and somehow neither do I. But I want him back, the way we used to be, when we loved each other with open hearts.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ I said, ‘that we never see each other in daylight any more?’

  ‘Yeah – it used to be like that with me and Jessie, when she was working on a show and I wasn’t,’ he said. ‘It’ll be different when the season’s over.’

  My mind ceased momentarily to compute, out of sheer amazement. I realised that I never looked ahead, with Javo, more than half a day.

  He kissed me goodbye in the street outside the tower.

  Rita told me she had seen him with a ‘red-headed girl’. In my imagination I erected instantaneously a great castle of paranoia with glittering towers and battlements. I examined it. I dismantled it brick by brick, and left it in a corner of the yard.

  We slept together every night.

  In the street, on a sunny, windy day, I ran into Javo on his knees outside the film co-op chalking up a footpath sign for that night’s supper show. He was stoned but sparkly-eyed; incredibly dirty, grey-skinned, black-lipped.

  I said, ‘Wanna come for a cup of coffee in Tamani’s when you’ve finished that?’

  ‘OK,’ he replied. ‘See you over there in a few minutes.’

  He came in, sat down at the table, and somehow he was with me but not with me. He kept looking over my shoulder, and I hesitated to start talking because I got the impression, halfway through a sentence, that I was talking into the phone long after the other person had hung up.

  He asked me what gnocchi was, and if I’d buy him some. I said yes, and he went to get a cigarette off Lillian at the other end of the restaurant, and sat down with her for ten minutes; and I sat on my own at my table feeling my heart go heavy and sink, feeling used again, paying for a meal I’d invited him to and ending up sitting with my chin in my hand staring out at the street while he talked with someone else – and to make it worse, with Lillian, long-legged good-looking Lillian in her ragged fur coat, who shared with me a past of such bitterness that it was all we could do to greet each other without a grimace, the rigours and theories of feminism notwithstanding. I was about to leave the price of the as yet unserved gnocchi in his box of chalk and go off quietly when he came back to the table and sat down opposite me, smiling with his bright eyes in his filthy face.

  ‘I had to tell the Bangkok story yet again,’ he said. ‘You know Lillian, don’t you? She’s too much!’

  But when we crossed the road together, he took my arm.

  I had a second try at seeing his show. Every fifth person in the audience was either nodding off or just about to: junk oozing in the atmosphere. I had learnt my lesson and did not trouble myself with Javo. When the play ended and the rock and roll began, I kept a safe distance and lounged with Paddy in the high bank of seats. But Javo seemed a bit concerned. He kept glancing over at me from the other side of the theatre, and when our eyes met he would give me one of his rueful smiles; once, when I grinned at him, he nodded vigorously at me, a sign of allegiance. I went over, in the end, and sat down beside him. He put his arm round my shoulder in an affectionate and unconsciously proprietary manner. We sat there happily for an hour or so. When the music finished I said,

  ‘I think I’ll go home now. Are you . . .?’

  He looked worried and said, ‘No . . . I’m going round to Easey Street to have a shower, first.’

  A hit, you mean, I idly thought.

  Chris said politely to me, ‘Want to come round for a cup of coffee, Nora?’ She smiled at me with a tinge of the same anxiety I saw on Javo’s face. It was a pleasant charade we all played out, me and the junkies, either to spare what they saw as my delicate sensibilities, or to be genuinely courteous: a social code with a sub-text that they meant me to grasp intuitively.

  ‘No thanks, Chris,’ I said, fulfilling my part. ‘I think I’ll just go home and crash.’

  Throwing cool to the winds, Javo took hold of my arm, kissed me on the mouth, and said, looking me right in the eyes, ‘See you, mate!’

  I got a cab home, smashed out of my brain, and staggered into the kitchen. I made myself a bowl of cold curry covered in yoghurt, guzzled it standing at the open fridge door, fell into bed and into sleep, and woke up again at four in the morning when Javo pushed open my door and burst in with his wet hair flopping and his dotty, pale eyes burning.

  ‘Are you mad at me? Did I behave all right this time?’ he mumbled as he tore off his clothes and crawled into bed next to me. I started to laugh. He had brought me an orange and a cup of blackcurrant cordial. He kept nodding off at first, but then we fucked, first time for a week, and talked a bit, and laughed, and fell asleep.

  In the morning when we were getting dressed I said,

  ‘Hey Javes. Do up my press-studs for me, will you?’ I stood still, head hanging.

  ‘Sure!’ he said, always eager to perform a small service. Breathing heavily, he wrenched and forced the defenceless studs on my jumper neck.

  ‘What a wonderful guy!’ he croaked, laughing at himself.

  All day I kept thinking of his clumsy ministrations, and a great plug of insane laughter would rise in my throat.

  ‘How do you feel about knowing you’ll be sleeping with the same person every night?’ asked Rita.

  ‘I love it.’

  ‘But you don’t sleep with him!’ she said, laughing at me. ‘You nearly always go upstairs to the spare bed!’

  I did, too: Javo crashed into my room at 2.30 or 3 or 4; he nodded off into a noisy sleep and I crept out of my bed and up the creaky stairs to the bed I called the cloud because it had three mattresses into which I would gratefully sink. I slept so utterly deeply there that the night seemed no longer than the blinking of my eyes.

  One night I went to bed at about seven o’clock. My room was warm, a fire was burning in the narrow grate, my bed was clean and comfortable with plenty of blankets. I read for a while and fell asleep at my ease. I was dreaming that I was in Bangkok with Martin’s father, when Javo came in and I woke up. He got undressed and came into bed, asking,

  ‘What did you do today?’

  I told him a blurry account, being mostly still asleep. But he began to give his ill-considered opinions, and I argued with him, and woke up
completely. I became discouraged and fell into silence. There was a long pause, both of us wide awake.

  I became aware of some very peculiar bodily sensations coming to me from outside my own skin. My stomach seemed to contain a big, aching hollow with a small point of discomfort, approaching pain, in the centre, and a frill of nausea at its edges; and my limbs, especially my legs, were bitterly, deeply cold.

  I said, ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Geez I feel shithouse.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  I described these sensations. He laughed, and said,

  ‘You’ve got my withdrawal pains.’

  ‘Have you had a hit today?’

  ‘No. I haven’t had one since yesterday.’

  This is ridiculous, I told myself. I lay there on my side, aching on his behalf, staring wide awake into the darkness and waiting for ordinary reality to reassert itself.

  ’ You must be feeling pretty bad,’ I remarked.

  ‘Yeah. But it’s in the head, too.’

  ‘You mean psychological pain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I breathed as calmly as I could, and after quite a long time I fell asleep. He slept very quietly behind me.

  Maybe one day I will feel his flash.

  I went out all day and didn’t see him till six-thirty in the evening, when I found him in the theatre. His pupils were large. He did not seem pleased to see me, and was offhand and cold. I went home and did four loads of washing at the laundromat. I washed his shirts and jeans and socks. Why do I do it? I do it for love, or kindness. Women are nicer than men. Kinder, more open, less suspicious, more eager to love.

  BLIND WHITE EYES

  Javo blundered into our house at teatime, Hank and Chris behind him.

  ‘Listen, Nor – I reckon you ought to hand Martin’s car over to Hank.’ His eyes remained fixed on the floor. ‘He can fix it when it breaks down. And he needs it.’

  ‘I’ve given it to Willy,’ I said. The kids clamoured behind me in the small room. ‘Shutup, Grace – Juliet – let me think. Why should I change that now?’

  ‘Because Hank needs it,’ raved Javo, eyes still averted. Hank was smiling uncertainly at me, hands in pockets, shifting from foot to foot: the dirty angel. ‘And you said you couldn’t keep it over here because of the parking tickets. You oughta give it to Hank – he’s got a job, after all; and Willy hasn’t.’

  ‘So fucking what?’ I felt that run of rage up my windpipe, as I stood there holding a teatowel, face flushed from the stove. Juliet’s piercing voice went straight through my head:

  ‘Don’t, Gracie – DON’T!’

  I slapped behind me without looking. One of them set up a wail.

  ‘It’s not fair, Nora, it’s not fair!’

  ‘Will you kids bloody SHUTUP?’ I was nearly crying. Javo stared doggedly at my feet. Hank saw I was about to go off the edge. He plucked at Javo’s sleeve.

  ‘Come on, mate. We’ll talk about it later. See you, Nor.’ He pulled Javo out the front door, and Chris followed, having observed the altercation with an impassive face. I was choking with anger.

  I was asleep at four in the morning when he knocked at the front door. I let him in, and stumbled back to bed while he made himself a cup of Ovaltine in the kitchen. He came in, got into bed. Very, very stoned. I had already half fallen asleep again. He put his arm round me: that moment at which total capitulation was always a possibility. I held back.

  ‘What’s wrong, Nor?’

  ‘I’m really pissed off with you. I don’t like the way you burst in here tonight, telling me what I ought to do with Martin’s car.’

  ‘But Hank needs it. He can fix it.’

  ‘It’s too late. It’s Willy’s now, you knew I was passing it on to Willy. How come you didn’t say anything before?’

  ‘Because Hank didn’t even drive it till last night.’

  ‘Anyway, the car’s not the main reason why I’m so mad at you. When you came in here tonight I was right off my brick with the kids, and you didn’t even notice. You just don’t give a shit about what I have to do in my life.’

  ‘Well . . .’ His voice took on the blurry, uncertain tone of the dope. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  I began to talk at length, angry and despairing; but I could never say more than two sentences before his breathing became louder and slower and he nodded off. I was nearly crying with unhappiness and frustration. Again and again, at my impatient movements, he would drag himself back to consciousness, mumble a few slurred words, and drift off again.

  At last I gave up. I got out from under the blankets, meaning to climb quietly up to the cloud and sleep the rest of the night there on my own; but by the time I was sitting on the edge of the bed, I was overcome by a fit of discouragement. I sat there in the half-dark and stared unhappily at my yellow feet on the blue floorboards.

  He woke up.

  ‘Wha – wha – where are you going?’

  ‘Upstairs to sleep.’

  ‘I’ll go there. At least you should have your bed for one night.’

  I stood up between the bed and the door, edging my way out. He was struggling with his mind up towards me, trying to speak or persuade, but lying flat among the blankets while I moved away from him.

  ‘It’s all right – I’d rather,’ I said; I wanted to contain his wretched and disorderly presence within the part of the house which was specifically mine. As I turned the corner of the stairs I heard him mumble and fade,

  ‘I hope you’re not upset, mate . . .’ and the old wood creaked under my feet, oh, what’s the use of trying with him? He says it himself:

  ‘You have to be a rat to be a junkie – a junkie’d kill his best mate for dope,’ that posturing to make the petty sordidness dramatic.

  I fell asleep huddling myself in the cold bed, up in the roof of the house.

  In the morning he woke up when I came back into the room after the children had gone to school. He got up and began to pack his clothes. While I was in my room he went down to the bathroom and had a shower and came back white-eyed, with a spoon handle sticking out of his jeans pocket. After Rita had gone out to her studio, I found him rummaging through her drawers.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking for a jumper.’

  ‘I think you’d better leave her things alone,’ I said dangerously, my stomach turning over with anger and disbelief.

  ‘But I’m cold! I’ve got no warm clothes!’

  He reared up from the drawers, turned as if to make for her other chest of drawers. I saw his blotched, peeling face and blind white eyes. I kept on standing there, stubbornly forcing him with my presence to drop his search and come out of her room. You dare, Javo, how do you dare.

  We walked over to Carlton. In the cold sunlight I looked at his face again.

  ‘I don’t know what this smack’s been cut with,’ he said. ‘Must be bicarb soda or something.’

  His skin was coming off in patches of dark pink and scaly white, and his glands and sinuses were swollen. He looked filthy and neglected. I felt like crying. I wanted him to go away (he was carrying his belongings on his back: ‘I’ll stay away for a couple of days,’ he said, ‘and you can come and visit me.’) because he was driving me crazy; but I wanted him to stay because when he was himself I loved him.

  We said goodbye at the counter of the University cafe. He kissed me openly, as he always did now, and I walked away full of agitation.

  That night I went to bed with a wood fire burning low in my room. And he came back. I half-woke when someone knocked at the front door in the middle of the night. I stayed in my bed and Rita went down.

  ‘Who is it?’ I heard her whisper through the closed front door.

  ‘Javo.’ She opened it.

  I lay quite still. He pushed open my door and came in. I was breathing. I wanted him to disappear, and I also wanted to say ‘Hullo’ as I always did; but he stood there in the middle of my room, and I lay there
in my bed with my eyes closed, and after a minute he turned round and crept loudly up the stairs to the cloud bed overhead. I heard him drop his clothes and shake my room with his attempts at quiet: he got into the cloud bed and everything settled again.

  Agitation! The house filled up with his anxiety.

  ‘True joy . . . rests on firmness and strength within, manifesting itself outwardly as yielding and gentle.’

  – I Ching: The Joyous

  Five days later I came home at lunchtime and found on my table a note:

  ‘Dear Nora, I have been here looking for my pawn ticket for my camera – and to say hullo – but I feel strangely uncomfortable, like as if my presence isn’t any longer allowed. I have been staying at Grattan Street for the last few nights where there is a room in which I may prop: but I think I should say that I miss you a lot.’

  At my table sat the author of this note, pen poised to sign his name. I sat on his knee and we hugged each other. We went to the city and ate a meal. He borrowed ten dollars from me and bought himself a blue cardigan. We walked back to the tower with our arms round each other, companionable and cheerful.

  In Willy’s room he struggled into the new cardigan.

  ‘Nor, do you want me to come home – I mean, back to your place – tonight?’ he said, looking not at me but at his cuffs as he wrestled.