by Iris Lavell
‘See,’ he says. ‘I told you it would be funny didn’t I?’
Louisa left school at fifteen, started her training to become a nurse’s aide, and not long afterwards was shown her first dead person. The clinical instructor pulled the curtain back after preparing her charges for gravitas that Louisa failed to feel. The body in death was a transitory token at best – a temporary link to the life that had gone. She would see many more corpses before she left the hospital to marry Victor. She would lay them out, think about them, forget for a while. They came back to haunt her after Tom died. Death in all its various forms.
Sometimes she sat with people as they died, when there was no one else. She felt their souls depart. Presence. Absence. She found one man too late, after rigor mortis had set in. He was set in the foetal position with his arms folded up and crossed over his chest. She thought of ancient ritualistic burials. He looked as if he were preparing himself for birth into the next world. That one returned to her sometimes, just before sleep. He’d been brought in off the street and nobody knew who he was. John Doe. It was difficult to tell how old he was – old to her mind then. He moved in and out of delirium.
That night he’d grabbed at her hand and read her palm as she prepared to straighten his bed. He told of her forthcoming marriage, the children she’d have, her unhappiness, and about Harry. Not by name; something about a musician. The details have become vague. Subsequent events have merged with memory. Perhaps there was something else about a mysterious man in a white van.
She is making it up. She wonders again about the man parked in front of her house. She wants to believe that there is more to life than she can see, and a stranger who can predict her future would suggest that. The man in the van might be significant.
The old man held her hand, talking in full flight, but suddenly looked startled, stopped and let her go.
‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Could you get me a bottle, nurse? I need a bottle now!’
Afterwards Louisa wondered if he had seen Tom’s fate in her hand. Had he wanted to spare her, or had he suddenly wondered whether he was really seeing the future at all?
It’s possible he just needed to urinate and couldn’t hold on any longer.
CHAPTER NINE
Harry ventures out to the backyard to discover that one of the bigger trees has pruned itself during the night, leaving a jagged edge that will rot if not tended. He calls several tree loppers listed in the local paper and finally secures the promise of a quote later in the day, timing vague. It means he has to hang around. Louisa has put on her corporate clothes and gone to work so he does the dishes and cleans up a bit. He is domesticity personified. If his friends could see him now, if he still had his friends, they wouldn’t know him. He has only himself to please these days, Louisa of course, and Buster.
He can’t think what’s changed him specifically, can’t put his finger on when it happened, but it’s true: he is a different man these days. His body has slowed down, and he’s become more domesticated than he was. It’s not as bad as he would have thought twenty years ago, or ten. Now he could happily have that life with Yasamine and Bella. Back then he couldn’t sit still. He thought he needed something, but it seems it was Yasamine that he needed all along. Eventually she got fed up with him and left. He blamed her but if he was honest with himself now he’d say he engineered it.
Bella was three. Perhaps she still has vague memories of him. He had a beard then, and long hair. Her fourth birthday was coming up because he’d already assembled the red and yellow swing set they’d picked out while his mother babysat. That was how quickly it changed from Yasamine staying and her deciding to go, or telling him, at any rate. It happened somewhere in that few days between when they bought the present and the day of the birthday. Yasamine fronted him one day and said it was over. They hadn’t even been arguing. The dull echo of that old hurt still threatens to entrap him, and he sidesteps it to walk straight into thoughts of Bella.
What sort of birthday did she have in the end? He can’t remember. She didn’t get the swing set. Yasamine didn’t take it with her, or he hung onto it just in case. Then he carted it to the rental property, just in case, and there it stayed until he moved on again. That time he left it behind. He wonders if it’s still there. After Yasamine and the bloke moved north with Bella, he never saw any of them again. He had the address for a while because of the papers he was served.
That day he’d just got home from whatever work it was that he was doing at the time. Making fibreglass covers for utes? Or that could have been later. His brief stint as a landscape gardener. Whatever it was, he was in his paint-splattered overalls and steel caps. That much he knows because he felt the difference between himself and the guy walking down the driveway in his clean shirt and tie, and later the mammoth self-control it took not to kick him in the head.
It was too late by the time he realised what was going on, that the guy parked opposite his house had been waiting to serve him. He didn’t sense the wrongness of the weasel scurrying down the driveway and catching him off guard at the door with his keys out. He probably thought the bloke was some sort of salesman, still thought it for the few seconds after he confirmed Harry’s name and pulled out the envelope. It took a moment or two to dawn on him, even though everything was in slow motion like just before a car crash.
He refused to sign her documents for months – a compulsive stretch of time where his furious calls alternated with her insistent cajoling. If the truth be told, he kept it going as long as he could because it let him feel that it hadn’t finished yet. But it was a sickening game: literally making him sick – in the body and mind. He started seriously fantasising about what he might do to them, all of them. Then what? Then what? Finish himself? But guys who do that, he’d always thought, should do themselves first. They’re weak and they’re mean. They’ve got no dignity. You can’t own someone else after all, not even your wife or kids. Ellington was playing on the radio, reminding him of another sort of life. The feeling subsided. They were dim days with few points of reference, but he must have been moving slowly through. And not far below the surface he knew that he was who he was, not defined by his connection to his wife, or his daughter, or anyone else for that matter.
One morning he woke up early and decided it was all just so much bullshit and that he didn’t care anyway – they weren’t worth it. Or they were worth it. He’d been getting there for a while, scared of what he was turning into. He finally gave in and signed. The other bloke adopted Bella officially and gave her his name.
Yasamine told him it would be the last thing she’d ever ask of him, that he could keep everything else, she didn’t care. He wouldn’t have to pay child maintenance. It was insulting, as if his intentions were so mercenary. That was more her style than his. He signed anyway, ending the conversation for good.
It’s one of those days when he can’t stop thinking about it, so he decides not to try. He indulges, makes another coffee and stares out the window. The rain has stopped.
Harry tries to conjure up Yasamine’s face, but this time he can’t. Instead he remembers a photograph of her sitting in a boat tied to a jetty. After he took the photograph he stepped into the boat and one of the oars fell into the water with the movement that he created. He tried to catch it but only succeeded in pushing it further away. She got mad at him; she called him an idiot, and got out of the boat. Then she came back. They must have got the oar back and gone for a row. He can’t remember the rest of it. But there were other things on that holiday. Good things. He remembers walking through the forest at Pemberton and the cool, musty smell of the bark.
There was a time when it could have been different, when he could have kept everything together, but for some reason he hesitated. He found it hard to make a commitment, even when she threatened to leave. He couldn’t give in.
It all sounds stupid now. Other people, normal people, plod on, mend their differences, accept that life isn’t perfect. He’s spent his adult
hood looking around for the perfect job and the perfect lifestyle, but has succeeded in scraping together just enough to pay the bills. He’s always been dissatisfied.
By three o’clock the rain has cleared and the sun is shining. The tree guy still hasn’t arrived. He’s probably not coming. It’s been a miserable day – can’t blame him. Harry decides to take Buster down to the dog beach. He leaves a note for Louisa: Lou, Gone to the beach. You might want to get a couple of frozen dinners. H xx
When he gets to the beach there is one small parking space available so he eases in there, between two urban assault vehicles. These days, spaces seem to be getting smaller in inverse proportion to the growth of vehicle sizes, and he feels a twinge of jealousy at the ostentatious affluence of everyone, it seems, except him. He feels like he’s the only one who can’t afford to live in a big house and drive a fancy car, although he notes with satisfaction that while the cars next to him would do nicely for the grey nomad life that he aspires to, they look as if they have never left the bitumen.
As he opens his door, Buster shoves past him and the driver’s door is pushed onto the vehicle in the next bay. Harry checks and can see nothing, no damage at all, but when he returns to his car after their walk, he finds a note on the windscreen. Scrawled in capital letters on both sides of a piece of paper torn from a small notebook is the following:
THANKS FOR THE SCRATCH ON MY CAR YOU FUCKING FUCKWIT. LEARN HOW TO FUCKING PARK YOU FUCKING IDIOT. I WOULD FUCKING KEY
Harry turns the note over.
YOU’RE FUCKING CAR BUT IT’S OBVIOUSLY SUCH A FUCKING PIECE OF JUNK THAT YOU WOULD’NT EVEN NO IF I DID. YOU FUCKING FUCKWIT.
The spaces on either side of him are now clear. Harry looks around to see if anybody is sitting in a vehicle watching him, but there is no one. He wonders about the occupant of the vehicle that was next to him. Did he walk past him on the beach with his dogs or his surfboard?
The note has obviously been left by someone with a great command of the lexicon, some fucked-up adolescent dealer, no doubt, who can afford a sixty-thousand-dollar vehicle through his ill-gotten gains.
The carpark is emptying out. Harry checks to see if his car has been keyed, but he can’t tell, so he screws the paper up into a ball and tosses it over his shoulder. Obviously he would have known if he’d scratched someone’s car, so either the bloke (he assumes male) has got his car scratched elsewhere and just noticed it, or he enjoys leaving notes around for the perverse pleasure of upsetting decent law-abiding people. Either way Harry wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
He thinks about how he will talk it over with Louisa when he gets home, and how they will both have a good laugh about it. They’ll speculate about the note-leaver and reduce him to the ridiculous dickhead that he is. She needs a good laugh. She hasn’t been laughing much lately. Harry should take the note to show her. He looks around but it has rolled away somewhere, or been caught by the wind.
‘Never mind,’ he says to himself. ‘Never mind. Leave it.’
He whistles Buster to the car, turns on the radio, and switches to the jazz program.
‘It’s strange,’ he thinks, ‘that note seems familiar.’
He’s sure he’s seen something like it before. Déjà vu. He wonders if Louisa has brought one home. He seems to remember her, or someone, claiming that she hadn’t even touched the car next to her, had actually gone out and come back in to leave more room, and had returned to some such note. Maybe it was Yasamine. Could it have been that long ago?
Then it occurs to Harry that this note could be like a sort of virus being passed on in the community by an organised group, a sort of suburban terrorist cell that has designed it as a way to stuff up a person’s day. This thought makes him angry again. Sure he can take it, but what if it happened to some sweet little old lady or some old guy with a dicky heart? Or some good person who has already been through the mill and is on the brink of giving it all up? This sort of thing could push them over the edge. Or what if he was a good person like a doctor – or no: a carer, or someone like a welfare worker who earns next to nothing for the privilege of trying to make life better for no-hopers like that guy when he falls on hard times? This thought gives him some satisfaction, imagining the guy dirty and unkempt, down and out, asking for a few dollars for a bus fare, getting knocked back, going on to the next person. This train of thought leads nowhere. Harry is feeling more annoyed than he was before. He drives home and catches every red light, thoughts of the guy circling through his head as he waits. He misses a green and someone beeps him, causing him to jump.
‘Bastard!’ he thinks. ‘I should have keyed the shit out of his fucking car. I bloody should have.’
Louisa gets home at a quarter past three, reads Harry’s note, and is exasperated by his dinner directive – more than the situation warrants. It’s been one of those days. She’s felt strange since she woke in the morning. She forced herself into the routine of getting dressed, going to work, struggled through the day, and now she’s arrived home to this. The more she thinks about it, the more it stresses her. Her heart is beating uncomfortably and she has broken out in a sweat. She needs some sort of release.
‘What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you!’ she shouts at the empty room, at Harry, at herself. It doesn’t help. She desperately searches for a skerrick of advice from Lucy that might help. Deep breaths, deep breaths, she tells herself. She breathes slowly and deeply. That brings it down a notch.
She pulls herself together, changes into comfortable shoes and goes out again. She looks around the shops for an hour or so and chooses fish dinners from the frozen section of the supermarket. When she gets back, Harry hasn’t returned. She decides she’ll make an effort so she sets the table with a cloth and candles, before going out to the tree to see if she can find a usable lemon. One has fallen on the ground and a small snail is stuck to it. She could detach the snail but its shell is thin and would be crushed. She leaves the fallen lemon and picks a greenish one from the tree, but her heart is thumping. There are signs everywhere that Tom is still around.
‘I know, Tom,’ she says to the air. ‘I remember everything.’ Her hands are trembling and a chill has spread over her body.
One spring morning Tom discovered a snail under the lemon tree as they walked around her parents’ garden. He would have been about two or three. The snail was hiding by a fallen lemon beneath the tree. Tommy let out a squeal of delight and was about to stamp on it, but Louisa held him back.
‘Don’t hurt the snail,’ she said. ‘Poor snail.’
She rescued the snail and put it in some greenery, where it would have to deal with new challenges, she supposed. Even a snail deserves a fighting chance.
Later when Tom told her mother that he had found a snail, her mother said she hoped he squashed it.
‘No, Mummy saved it,’ he said.
‘Yes, that sounds like Mummy,’ said her mother.
These are the things she remembers. ‘Do you remember, Tom?’ she says. ‘You were too small.’ Her heart sinks a little.
That day, Louisa realised that no big hand would come down from the sky and rescue her and the children. She would have to save herself. She would have to stop being passive. It took her another three or four years to work up the courage to leave. She was waiting for something bad to happen to her husband. She was waiting for him to get his just desserts.
But that was wrong, and anyway the world doesn’t work like that. He had a right to live his life. Everyone has a right to live a life – to follow it through to its natural conclusion. Everything. She stares at the lemon picked green from the tree, remembers dinner, returns to the feel of her feet inside her shoes, hard against the brick paving, the shifting leaves on the rosebushes, the distant sound of traffic.
She has just walked inside when she hears a familiar engine sound. The vehicle pulls up outside the front of the house and stops, with its engine still running. She goes to the window. The van is back. She jumps away f
rom the window and sneaks a look from the side, trying to see what he is doing. The man, who she now recognises is a cross between Tom and Victor, is looking in her direction. His window fogs up. He wipes a patch clear, and continues looking in the direction of the house.
She is unnerved. Her heart begins to beat irregularly, threatening to stop, and alternately racing to the point of bursting. Her forehead is damp, and the back of her neck is prickling. She shivers. He is looking, at the house, at the window. The engine is running. She wonders if he can see her. She edges further into the corner and, holding the lemon like a hand grenade, drops to the floor, crawls along the wall beneath the sill, and takes cover under the coffee table. Her eyes are fixed on the passage that leads to the front door. She can hear the engine, louder now, revving. What if he is aiming to drive straight through the front wall? She crawls out from the coffee table, across the floor to the far corner of the room. The front wall will slow him down. He won’t get at her there in the corner, not if she makes herself small enough. Then what?
Now her thoughts are spinning, winding tighter and tighter to the only possible conclusion – Victor. He has paid this man to do his dirty work. He knows where she lives. He’s got this man watching her, and he’s employed him because of the man’s resemblance to their son. It’s a new kind of torture, something to keep her hanging, to get her back in his control.
She will not be intimidated! She is finding it hard to breathe. She curls herself into a ball, closing off every point of access. She seals herself in.
CHAPTER TEN
The rain has forced a new hole through the gutter just outside the bedroom window. Each time it rains, the water funnels down, causing a minor flood. Harry leaves a plastic bucket under the waterfall – a temporary fix until he can get someone in. He would try to do it himself, but he’s getting stiffer, and he feels as if he’s got enough on his plate with Louisa being the way she is.