by Anna George
‘I’ll come out!’ she shouts.
Mira considers hiding, with no time for politeness tonight. Then she pictures the reprimand on Elle’s heart-shaped face. In Doris’s hand-me-down Valiant, Elle helps Doris buy her groceries and do her banking. Even at Elle’s most heartbroken and distracted, Mira suspects that she was managing these things.
Doris appears at the lowest section of the grey paling fence and Mira walks over to her. She feels remarkably tall. Doris is wearing her standard dress: white and covered in purple flowers. Her limbs are mottled a matching colour thanks to large bruises reminiscent of land masses on a map. These bruises are drawn from the edge of the sofa, or a book or the fridge. To Mira’s mind, Doris ought to be tended to by professionals in a home, not left to roam with a buzzer around her neck. Once, after a fall, rather than push the button, Doris crawled to her telephone to cancel her hair appointment. Elle and the hairdresser had to break in to scrape her from the carpet.
‘You ought to be inside, Doris.’
‘I’m not afraid of a puff of smoke,’ says Doris.
‘I won’t keep you, though. Have you seen Elle?’
‘Well, no —’ says Doris.
Mira feels a fresh nip of worry. ‘I thought she was having a night in.’
‘Could be she was,’ says Doris. ‘But he visited earlier. Must’ve parked around the corner.’
Had Doris been forty years younger, Mira would have sworn. She manages an ‘Oh.’
‘I considered going over but I didn’t have the heart.’
‘No.’ Mira wonders what she would have done. Facing David was unpleasant but facing Elle after him was worse: Elle’s reactions ranged from delirium to indignation to misery. Tough to watch. Badly, Mira wants to kick the paling fence. She scans the encroaching sky. They could be anywhere now, she thinks. Worse, they could be in bed.
‘Thanks for letting me know,’ she says as calmly as she can. Then she pivots.
‘I didn’t see them leave,’ says Doris. ‘To begin with I was in the sleep-out, folding washing. Then I heard a bit of commotion and it was quiet.’
With a sigh, Mira notes the time on her phone: 6.45. The drive to Troy’s at Jan Juc takes an hour and a quarter. ‘I need to get going,’ she says.
‘I couldn’t be certain over the music but I thought I heard raised voices.’
Discreetly, Mira eyes the devices perched behind Doris’s ears.
‘The music is still on,’ says Doris. ‘If you come down the back you can make it out.’
Mira frowns. It is unlike Elle to leave music playing and go out. But she’s had enough of lurking tonight.
‘My boys —’ says Mira.
‘Oh, no you don’t.’
Doris grips Mira’s arm with gnarled fingers and shuffles towards the rear of the modest Victorian properties. They pass Doris’s weatherboard sleep-out, which is adjacent to Elle’s glassy kitchen, and there, from behind drawn blinds, is his unmistakable music. Energetic and distinct. Another thunderclap of anger rumbles inside Mira. All those late-night calls, the debriefings around her table when they should’ve been working, the lectures she delivered when the boys were asleep. This time the break had lasted two months and Elle had made headway. Or so Mira thought.
‘You could fit in there, couldn’t you?’ says Doris, jabbing her hand at six levered windows high in the wall. ‘You can slide them out, I understand.’
Mira blinks her surprise. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’
Doris trains startling violet eyes on her. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’
Mira hesitates and the flesh on her arms goose-pimples. What she saw in David in thirty seconds, it took Elle the better part of two years to see. Much of what she saw she didn’t like. But had she somehow underestimated him? Her fingers worry her right eyebrow. She doesn’t doubt the intimate, unwitting knowledge of neighbours.
When Doris nods, like a patient schoolteacher, Mira’s disquiet grows.
Briefly, Mira revisits the gist of what she knows: the bust-ups and stalemates. Then her mind latches on to an image of old: Elle, wide-eyed and hopeful, yearning to feel what Mira had once felt for Jude. Charming, irresponsible Jude. As if being swept away by love’s madness was an appealing proposition. Did Elle completely outgrow that naivety? she wonders. Equally, what risk does David pose today? The two uncertainties seem to cancel each other out. She becomes aware of a moment’s silence before the male singer resumes his crooning. No other noise is coming from within. And no answers come to her.
Unnerved, she turns from Doris’s assessing gaze to the window above her own head. She’d have to climb onto the paling fence, tease the glass from the rusted lever clips, and propel herself headfirst into the gap. At best, if she removes all six pieces of glass, she estimates that the space is barely bigger than a pricey shoebox.
‘I’ve got a step ladder in my shed,’ says Doris.
A horn toots from the roadside, and Mira startles. ‘That’ll be the kids.’ She takes Doris’s hand in both of hers. ‘Doris, the sky has got to us. Enough of this nonsense. No one’s going climbing. Now get back inside until the wind picks up.’
With a wave, Mira runs from the crooning old man and the curious old woman.
At the gate, her bitterness surprises her.
Elle, you’re on your own.
6
From the rear of her home, airborne and adjacent to her laundry, Elle watches Mira trot to the dusty Saab. She hears the car door snap open and the finality of the slam. She watches as Doris retreats into her sleep-out and hears the latch click. Come back, she thinks, please.
Mira and her darling sons are poised in the idling car, where Mira is on the phone. Time is unmoving and Elle is heartened; perhaps they won’t leave, after all. To Mira, especially, there is much she would like to say.
Abruptly, the old Saab glides away, and Elle tries to glimpse her nephews. She longs to kiss the boys’ soft necks, to breathe their angelic breath – one last time. But, to her surprise, she can’t move any further from her body. Too quickly, the road is empty.
Mira, she thinks, I am so sorry.
The day Mira met David was the day after Elle’s mishap in his mansion. The day she came home from the Alfred Hospital. A script meeting and a chat with an actor had been scheduled for that weekend, both of which she’d refused to cancel. It was a warm, cloudless and unpleasant December Saturday. Unpleasant because an odour pervaded all of Seddon. Blowing from the southeast, the wind had brought to the small suburb the fumes from the Spotswood and Yarraville Mobil storage terminals. When Elle and David drove up to her sweet little house, refined fuel particles were saturating the air. Invisible and almost imperceptible, the particles were clinging to her rose bushes and the petals of her magnolias, the stained glass above her door and the pickets of her fence. The odour greeted her as she rose, awkwardly, from the car. The bite at the back of her throat was unambiguous: industrial, petroleum-based, foul. Weary from her night in hospital, she felt frustration seed within her. How could this happen, today, in a capital city in a first-world country? Seddon, seven kilometres from the centre of Melbourne, was hardly a remote backwater. But, beside David, she bit her tongue.
In the emergency department her right elbow had been popped into its joint. Now, with her swollen arm in a sling and a directive to rest, she felt foolish for her clumsiness. According to Dr Singh, dislocating an elbow was quite a difficult thing to do. She feared she had dislocated much more.
David had been quiet since her fall. Courteous with staff, he’d fetched her extra pillows and said little. According to the nurses, he’d refused to go home or sleep on a rare spare bed; instead, he lay on the floor beside her like a loyal pup. By the time he escorted Elle out of the ward, he had two of the nurses cooing and clucking. Although befuddled by the night’s events, she’d felt a pang of pride.
‘Your place, I take it?’ he said, exiting the hospital. His hand was hovering over the indicator, his eyes on the intersec
tion.
‘Yes, please.’
She rested her head against the leather seatback and closed her eyes. That she’d been so unnerved the night before had surprised her. But, that morning, she could understand it. The truth was that he had ambushed her. In that graceful, neglected house he was living half a life. And then, the freshness of his divorce. She had felt both sad for him and exposed herself. Which was why, she supposed, she became critical. It was an old habit begun in primary school. (What had her mother called her? A ‘hard little girl’.) And lastly, compounding matters, his poorly timed proposal. How she’d yearned to step into a cupboard and disappear. It had felt so flattering and good and so, so bad.
As they wove their way onto St Kilda Road, she thought of his sneer, his need and anger. So foreign and so inflamed. She tried to let the car take her, without thinking. She managed it for six seconds. While gaps in her understanding of him had emerged, so too had gaps in his understanding of her. He knew she had slipped joyfully from the law’s golden handcuffs. But he was mistaken if he thought she’d share his overly large cage. He was driving intently now, manoeuvring his classic old car fluidly from lane to lane. Aggressively. She stroked her lip. As stately as his house was, or could be, it was also not what she aspired to – or needed. It was as if he thought, by sharing his career’s spoils, she might validate his wealth and overlook his unhappiness. That, she had thought, glimpsing his concentrated stare, would be impossible.
Mira was curled on Elle’s decrepit loveseat when they pulled up. She was nursing a casserole, a loaf of sourdough and a roll of film magazines. The magazines, Elle guessed, would be covered in flour and well-thumbed. The casserole would be pumpkin and red lentil. And out of sight in Mira’s shoulder bag would be Elle’s marked-up script. Raising her left arm to wave, Elle felt her eyes well. With her mother in a remote outback community and her brother busily failing as an actor, this small, wide-smiling, dark-eyed woman was her family. All thanks to the lobster scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, which they’d both cited as an all-time favourite in the first week of film school. And it had been three days; Elle had missed that sunny face with its blunt fringe and near-black mane.
Seeing Mira’s puzzled expression, Elle felt a stab of guilt. She should have insisted that David meet Mira weeks ago. He was always ‘in a late meeting’ or ‘wanting a quiet night’, but she should have pushed. Especially as she’d met Mira’s Troy Hosking months ago, and their relationship was as fresh. Troy Hosking was their age, a painter of some standing; someone’s children were friends with his. Mira had seen his new SUV at kindergarten pick-ups, had liked the wild colours of his scarves, the way he dressed his girls. Prosperity was a relatively new prerequisite for Mira, a legacy of Elle’s brother, who had left her with two toddlers. The bastard. Elle couldn’t argue with Mira’s pragmatism; she still felt guilty and mildly ashamed about her role in that pairing. But Troy Hosking had sounded just like what Mira deserved after two years of punishing single parenting.
When Elle had met him, a week into his relationship with Mira, she was wrong-footed. Perhaps because Mira was so taken by Troy, Elle had conjured an idealised version of the man – tall, intellectual yet earthy, good-looking. In reality, he was a petite, cheery fellow with scruffy, mousey hair. More like an ageing, tradie surfer than a successful inner-city painter. (And nothing like Jude!) Elle had marvelled that there wasn’t anything extraordinary about him, except perhaps his wildly colourful beanies and scarves. After a moment, conscious of her critical eye, she’d chastened herself. Because, equally plain, he loved his twin girls and adored Mira. And his goodwill extended naturally to Elle.
Hesitating at her gate, too warm in her sling, Elle observed the shifts in Mira’s face. Silently, her best friend and boyfriend each took in the other. David’s grey suit pants, striped blue shirt, polished lace-ups. Mira’s polka-dot yellow pinafore, well-loved sandals, daisy toe-ring. Their tribal colours.
David was first to the porch. He thrust out his hand: ‘You must be Mira.’
Mira smiled politely but her hands were full. ‘Hi.’ She turned to Elle, her curvaceous mouth stretching to its limit. ‘You klutz.’
The women kissed, a touch of lips. With a nod, David unlocked the door and entered. Elle followed, mildly aflutter. These two had to find something in each other to like. In the cool kitchen, Mira made coffee while David answered a work call. A moment later he returned and unravelled the morning’s newspaper. To Elle’s surprise, he inserted himself at the table between the two women and walled himself behind the Financial Review.
‘David,’ said Mira, to the newspaper, ‘I hear you’re a lawyer in town?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s your area?’
His shrug was noncommittal. ‘Banking litigation.’
‘Okay, are you for the banks or the little guys?’
‘The banks.’
‘Oh.’ Mira glanced at Elle in mock reproach. ‘You must be busy.’ Mira’s grin was infectious and Elle caught it.
‘That’s the way we like it,’ said David. He squinted at the share prices. Seconds passed. Mira considered him then, as if he were encoded. Elle’s grin vanished. Mira’s glance swung from David to Elle’s arm, like a pendulum. Elle realised her text message had been too vague. ‘So, guys,’ said Mira, ‘tell me the story. What happened here?’
Elle glanced at David.
‘She fell,’ he said.
‘Okay . . .’
The silence deepened. Elle was getting hot. ‘I was dancing,’ she said loudly, ‘and I tripped on my backpack.’ She kept her gaze on David, who was puzzling over the fine print.
Mira frowned before lobbing another question. ‘And where were you,’ she said to David, ‘when all this dancing was going on?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, dipping the newspaper. ‘I was there.’
Mira’s large mouth stilled, then curved, almost comically, downward. Confused and increasingly embarrassed, Elle glanced to David. But he was obscured again by blocks of black print.
Mira sipped her black coffee. ‘What sort of dancer are you anyway?’
Elle shot a smile at David.
‘Not so good, it’d seem,’ he said, as he turned the page.
Mira looked to Elle, this time, as if to a translator. Elle sat up, crossing her legs. They waited. Yes, Mira was being cheeky but she was harmless. Surely he had to give her something?
David inched his chair from the table, presumably to better read. At a loss, Elle rubbed her arm in its sling. Mira’s lips remained steadfastly closed. After a moment, David crashed the newspaper into a folded mass.
‘Excuse me, that’s my phone again.’
As he left the kitchen, the women heard his friendly greeting. Elle laughed nervously. ‘He’s not one for small talk.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘I’ll have to, ah, train him up.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
When Mira rose to clear the table of its two mugs, Elle’s smile was rueful. ‘I’m sorry for not introducing you two earlier. I . . . I wanted to be sure.’
Mira nursed Elle’s empty mug. ‘And now you are?’
Elle stood, smiled. Her voice came out too loud again: ‘Yes.’
Mira’s already husky voice dropped an octave. ‘You’re actually in love?’
Heat rebounded in Elle’s cheeks.
‘He’s not what I’d expected,’ Mira said.
‘No.’ Elle wondered if she could see disappointment in Mira’s shapely lips. ‘But we have a wonderful time. We’re quite different, but we fit.’
After a pause, Mira put the crockery into the dishwasher. ‘I can see one thing you like about him.’
‘You can?’
‘He’s certainly easy on the eye – if you like that sort of thing.’
Elle waved, feigning indifference.
‘Bring him over next week for paella,’ said Mira. ‘Troy’ll get a conversation out of him.’
‘Sure.’ A stone pl
unged into the well of Elle’s stomach.
When Mira’s smile was a tighter version of her own, Elle made a decision: etiquette mattered. She would tell David she expected nothing less.
She rolled her right shoulder in its socket. ‘Can we chat about the script tomorrow?’
‘Yeah, you duffer.’ Mira took the draft and her notes from her bag. David returned then to top up his coffee, with work to do.
On the porch, the women’s hug was long. But, once Mira was gone, Elle felt herself relax. The scrutiny was over.
After a fitful afternoon sleep, she rose to find him in the kitchen where he was dancing among bags of groceries. She saw nothing funny then in his hammy cha-cha. Bemused, she watched as he unpacked full-cream milk, wholemeal bread, potato chips, chocolate ice-cream, recycled toilet paper and vegemite. Plastic bags flew in the air around him like bubbles. She opened her mouth to speak but he kissed her moving lips and headed out. When he returned from the car again, he had his laptop and three bunches of tulips – yellow, orange, white. Recognising the flowers as those from Middle Brighton, she smiled. A cautious smile.
He grinned. ‘Well, I’m glad you at least like these.’ His face sobered. ‘You don’t look so good. You hungry?’
‘I could be.’
He pulled out a stool. ‘Here.’
She sat at her bench while he chopped vegetables. The knife moved up and down unsteadily in his hand, and irregular chunks of carrot, mushroom, onion, broccoli, asparagus emerged. Elle watched, assembling her thoughts. She didn’t comment when he forgot to wash the broccoli, or the carrots, not even when he dropped a handful of sliced onion on the floor, picked it up and tossed it in the wok. Finally, she said, ‘Your behaviour’s been rather odd, Mr Forrester, don’t you think?’
‘It has?’
‘Yes, both last night and then this morning.’
‘Ah, last night.’ He shot a sideways look at her. ‘Clearly neither of us was at our best.’