You shift in your chair, and it flares through you again. You think of the way he grunted when he came, of how he made you feel vanquished. Why does a person abandon herself in this way? But then again why does anybody do anything? Why do people write plays? Why do people create songs? Maybe because they want to live. They want to put themselves on the line. They want personal risk. They want some fire, some unpredictability in their life. Is it so very different?
An enigmatic quality begins to float down over the whole experience. There’s something about the quietly personal nature of it, the obliviousness of those around you. There isn’t anybody you could ever tell about this, but there is a little part of you that would like to. Part of you wants to make loud, shocking announcements about it, and you begin to imagine yourself performing on a stage in your own theatre. You look down into the audience and feel amused by the way you are astonishing them – the growing distaste on their faces as you allow the grotesque beast to pummel you, to gratify himself inside you. And meanwhile, somewhere off-stage, there is a secondary tension as the heedless dupe goes about his business, pick, pick, picking his red peppers. Together with the audience you come to the knowledge that now you have started this there will be an escalation. It is, after all, the imperative of any drama.
The heedless dupe? Heedless? Dupe? Is this anger? Perhaps that’s it. Maybe it took an act such as this to reach the spot that has been burning you for such a long time, in such a deep place. If you let yourself think about it this way, then you could almost redefine what you’ve done as a singular, complicated, secretive act of marital repair – a balancing out with some furtive activity of your own.
But is it such a simple business? One expunging the other?
A central door opens and the face of a striving innocent is introduced into the scene, but your character has turned now. Has become the inflicter. You can see that Floyd wants you to tell him he’s done an excellent job. ‘Everything okay?’ he asks, knowing that his brochure is perfect, and waiting for you to compliment him, as any good boss would, on his diligence.
‘It’ll do, I suppose,’ you say, sweeping the proofs up and handing them back to him.
It’s not until later, when you’re sitting in the car on the way home to your family, that you begin to feel the need to make new concessions for yourself. There is now this alternative you within your life, this miscreant, otherly player. It’s a role you could allow yourself to inhabit temporarily, a character you could probably co-exist with, so long as you don’t conduct any mergings in your mind. You are not an alcoholic or a pill-popper, you are not addicted to gambling or heroin, you do not smoke, do not cut yourself, you are not a slave to your next meal, you don’t sit blankly absorbing television. But still, everybody, at one time or another, needs their medicine, don’t they?
And where is the fire if all a person ever does is shut themselves in a shed with their instruments? The truth might be that you have been missing the thrown energy, the lugging of amps up and down stairs, the boys fiddling about with leads, the hot blare of lights, the dreams of bigger stages, the denied nerves, the striking of the first chords, the sweat flying, the bass drum vibrating the floor, the cheers and whistles, the gradual inhabitation of the crowd’s idolatry, and the sense of magic as great rolling riffs are pulled out of nowhere.
If there was still a bit of that around, you might not have been so easily drawn.
Evie
I was standing in the spice aisle trying to choose between two different brands of cinnamon, thinking about the call from Melbourne that morning – Monique saying, ‘You haven’t abandoned us?’ Her friendly-enough inquiry had a slight edge to it.
‘No. I’ll be back soon,’ I’d told her. ‘It’s just I’ve got quite a lot to sort out. I’ll need some more time.’ It felt as if I was lying, and really I was leading Monique on. I’d imagined I might begin to miss the restaurant, but every day the idea of returning seemed less urgent. What I was really doing was stalling for time before deciding if I was ever going back.
‘Of course. It’s just that temporary staff is such an expensive option …’ Monique said, letting the tiniest note of impatience enter her voice. She’d once allocated me a small shareholding in her restaurant, a move that I’d allowed myself to believe was recognition and reward but was beginning to see now might have been pure business from Monique’s perspective. A staff-retention insurance.
The excuses I gave her involved visits to probate lawyers, taking my father’s old clothes to the Sallies, rehoming his pet budgie (‘God sakes, just open the cage door,’ Monique suggested), and the sale of the house. I’d laid out a long-game, but still it was possibly all talk. I wasn’t yet ready to deal with finalities on any side of the Tasman.
Dylan had already suggested that he’d ‘probably hang out over here for a while, maybe get a job’. He had this idea for a business, he’d announced. Printing designs on tee-shirts and selling them at the market with his friend. Maybe I could lend him some start-up cash? He’d wagged so much of last year, I’d begun almost to enjoy not having the struggle to persuade him to school every morning. When we’d jumped on the plane I’d only meant to take him out of his final year for a week or so, but we’d let it slide for so long now I could see it was beginning to look irrelevant for him. He’d pointed out that his staying didn’t mean that I had to stay too. ‘I could live here at Granddad’s maybe,’ he suggested. ‘Or find a flat, even. I’ll have my own money.’ It’s not that it hadn’t crossed my mind that it would be quite nice to be free of him, but even if I was free of him I wouldn’t be free of the worry about him.
The resonance of Monique’s voice, so full of forward momentum and purpose, made me begin to wonder if I was entitled to let grief keep me in stasis for this long, and in fact if this sense of grief was wholly about my father’s death. All of these thoughts put me in the worst possible preparation for an encounter with someone from my past.
‘Evie, right? It’s you, isn’t it?’
It took me a moment to recognise Trish Stackhouse, once voted one of the three prettiest girls in the fifth form, and now wearing a nursing uniform that was straining around her hips.
‘God, long time! What have you been up to?’ she asked.
‘I’m just over from Melbourne actually.’
‘Oh yes. I heard about your father. Sorry about that.’
‘Thanks.’
An uncomfortable moment, then Trish said, ‘This is so weird. You’re the second person from our class I’ve seen today. You’ll never guess who just came in for some respite care.’
‘No, I probably couldn’t …’
‘Vince Kingston. Remember him?’
My hand reached out and grabbed hold of the metal shelf. ‘Really?’ I managed.
‘Oh, maybe you didn’t know. He had a car accident a few years after school. Never the same again.’
‘I think I did hear that.’
‘Anyway, you should pop over and pay him a visit while you’re here, it’s just down the road. He’s only in for a while to get his seizures under control and give his mother a break. Mind, don’t expect him to recognise you. Hasn’t got much of a memory on him.’
She left soon after, waving a packet of chocolate biscuits and saying it was her shout for morning tea and she had to dash. ‘See you soon,’ she said.
The air around me suddenly seemed much too disturbed to continue with something as mundane as food shopping. I abandoned my half-filled supermarket basket and went outside to sit on one of the mall’s new public seats, designed in the shape of waves and controversially uncomfortable to sit on. All Dylan’s life I’d had fantasies about introducing him to Jed, and Jed taking him on and teaching him things I couldn’t about masculine wiles, and the application of male charm, and also about harvesting creative energy, and robustness, and boldness and courage. But, buried somewhere in the back of my mind, there had always been Vince. Even the idea of Vince was so very unapproachable, so entwined with pain
and large, unsolvable problems.
It took me days to decide that I would visit him, though after a while the inclination to do so felt less like a choice and more an obligation. Quite randomly, a chance had been presented to me to find out exactly what sort of damaged man he was now.
The residence was built in a U-shape, with the patients’ names on the doors. I walked along, not exactly looking into the faces of strangers whose heads popped up as I passed, and who all too often seemed to carry a look of downcast bewilderment, as if they were thinking it was careless to have found themselves washed up there. When I found the right tag, I cautiously peered into the room and saw him lying in the bed. I’d despised him for many years, and then trained myself not to think of him with any vested feelings, so it required a few big intakes of breath before I could step into the room.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ he returned. His face was lopsided, puffy, and his eyes had a gelid quality to them. ‘My mother has just gone off to do some errands. She says she’ll be back soon. She says I have to stay here.’
He’d been a foolishly handsome boy once, who had left school early to become a mechanic. While everybody else was finishing off their studies, he was the guy with money and independence, and it had lent him a cool bravado that was destined to grow tired over time. He was smart-mouthed and irrepressible, always up for any stupid prank or dare. There had been flattery when he first showed some interest in me. For years I’d hoped that Jed would materialise back into my life, but by the time I was eighteen or so that desire had settled into a low-grade disappointment. For a while Vince had been the nearest thing, the vice-captain of the gang, the second-rung substitution. We’d gone out a few times, but it had always ended in an awkward struggle where he tried to get me to have sex with him, or at least let him put his hands down my pants, and one time he put his hand around the back of my head and tried to force my face down towards his crotch. After I’d stopped seeing him I suspected that the whole episode, even the pretending to like me, was the subject of a bet amongst his friends. And later still, the vehemence with which he forced himself on me at the party suggested he really had believed he deserved something. This thought became especially bitter when I found out I was pregnant. I was in Australia already when I heard about his accident. When Roma told me about it on the phone, not knowing the one great big secret of my life, some terrible words escaped my mouth: ‘Serves him right.’
Now he was just a big glutinous sort of a guy occupying a narrow metal bed.
‘My name is Evie,’ I said. There wasn’t even the barest flutter of recognition. I sat down in the chair beside him. ‘I was in your class at school. Do you remember me?’
‘I don’t go to school anymore.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Are you here to look after me?’
‘No, just visiting.’
‘I have to stay here for a while. I like my room at home a lot more though, because I have all my own things there. I don’t have my things here. Except my pillow. I brought my special pillow with me. And this cup is mine too. I’ve had this cup for a long time.’ He leaned forward and whispered, ‘Sometimes I hide it under the blankets when I’m not using it. People steal things in here.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and could think of nothing much to say to this tragically reduced form of him, with that fat, puffy pillow supporting his wrecked and scarred head. I’d entered this room reluctant to feel anything, but now I was experiencing a little sorrow for all his lost potential. No person could rejoice in this. Poor ruined Vince, maybe he could have been somebody.
He closed his eyes, and fell into a remote state that was so jerking and twitchy that I wasn’t exactly sure if it was sleep. I began to feel voyeuristic. But just as I got up to leave, a woman stepped into the room. She was wearing the sort of clothes that were more for comfort than style, and her cheeks were so vigorously ruddy they suggested she might be suffering from some kind of serious vascular problem.
‘Hello?’ she said.
I told her hurriedly that I knew him when he was at school.
‘That’s nice. We don’t often get visitors from the old days anymore.’ She smiled, but there was a lot of woundedness behind that smile. She looked down at Vince, fitting still, and said in a quiet voice, ‘I hate him being in here, but I didn’t really have any choice.’ Her voice wavered, and the expression on her face contained apology, the selfless kind of guilt. She sat down in the chair beside the bed in such an exhausted way that I felt my heart twist.
A nurse put her head around the door and said, ‘Oh, Mrs Kingston, I’m glad I caught you. I’ve one more consent form for you to sign, I’m afraid. It has to do with the new drug regime Doctor has put Vince on. Have you got a moment to do it now?’
‘Oh well,’ I said, seizing the opportunity to get out of there. ‘Nice to meet you, briefly.’
She made a lonely nod, and I quickly moved off down the hall. The sight of her, with her deep well of sadness, scared me, and evoked a sudden, terrible sense of dishonesty. I’d decided a long time ago, from the moment of conception almost, that if Vince was the father he was not worthy of knowing his own son. I hadn’t for a moment thought about any answerability beyond that. The grandparents? The uncles and aunts? Their right to know? And now the poor woman was possibly sick. God, what if she was dying? I tried to remember if Vince was her only child. Did he have brothers and sisters?
Shut up. It was rape.
I stopped at the bottle shop on the way home. ‘Had a good day?’ the guy at the till asked. It seemed unlikely that he expected an honest answer, and I didn’t give him one.
Safely inside the house, I grabbed the nearest glass on the kitchen bench, crawled into the bed my father used to sleep in and uncapped the first of the wines. I didn’t know what I wanted from the bottom of that bottle. To find courage, or to obliterate the question? To clarify the possibilities, or to make them irrelevant? I sipped and sipped until I could begin to feel the sauvignon’s drugging effects in my veins. I knew that if there were classes of drinking, this was the loneliest type possible, but I kept raising that glass to my lips until the faces of Dylan and Vince and Jed merged into one, and I kept on going until my past and present completely drifted …
In the morning I sat down in front of the computer, drinking coffee, staring at the blank screen. No cakes were baked that day. It was nearly noon before I could make myself google paternity testing, just in case I might get to the place it’s better to know. I was careful to delete my search history when I’d finished. All I needed to do was eliminate one of the two possibilities. Better to swab the barely sentient one, though. At least then the result could be contained, if it needed to be.
Haley
There’s before logic and after logic. Trying to get hold of the before logic is like trying to grab hold of some slippery thing that spools through your hands. It’s not like I didn’t do things to make it happen, but it’s hard now to see why I thought it was a good idea. Guess I convinced myself I could have some of what Sas had, that secretive I’m not a virgin aura, that I’m badder than you think aura.
Maybe, though, what I really should have been aiming for was the bigger thing that Sas and Wolf had, the whole entanglement. Big mistake, I can see now, was thinking it was about the act, the sex, the getting rid of boring old virginity.
Seeded an idea, and a secret girl conspiracy made it happen, and before I could even think too hard about it Sas had got Wolf to throw his car keys over to Dylan and we were heading out the door together. Dylan drove Wolf’s old wreck of a car so slowly towards the beach that I knew he must already be totally bent. Before we began anything, we sat in the front seat, looking out over the moonlit sea. Dylan talking fast, talking shit, random. Reckoned he’d like to be a great white shark because when you see pictures of them underwater they had this evil grin and it would be wicked to occasionally eat a surfer just for the fun of it. ‘Or maybe a humpback whale,’ he went on, ‘because you
could go and hang out in Antarctica and that would be mean as, so long as you didn’t get harpooned by some punk-ass Japanese fishing vessel.’ Words bouncing around the car’s interior, like they had an energy of their own.
‘They don’t do that anymore.’
‘Who?’
‘Japanese. They changed the rules.’
Awkward moment, like I spoiled his flow or something. Couldn’t just not say anything, so started talking about a film I saw about king penguins in Antarctica. ‘It’s harsh as there, it’s a miracle anything survives, let alone all those baby penguins. The mother lays the egg, and then passes it over to the father who nestles it in a flap of skin under its belly.’ Could hear myself rapid talking: ‘And then she just goes off on a trek to get a feed in the sea and the father penguin, like, keeps the egg warm for more than three months in the coldest winter in the world, without eating, shuffling the egg around on his feet.’
‘I’ve seen that shit,’ he says. ‘And then the eggs hatch and the adults have to walk around with these squawking heads between their feet and stuff.’
‘The fathers do it.’
‘Yeah, the fathers.’
Nobody speaks for a while but the pause is panic-making and I blurt out: ‘At least they’re not the kind of fathers that can’t even stick around until you’re born.’
Dylan says, ‘Yeah, I never knew my father either.’
There is nothing much else to say. In front of us the sea is dead calm, with moonlight skimming across the surface, and there we are, together-alone in the beautiful universe of no-show fathers. Dylan stretches his arm out across my shoulders, and we start kissing.
Okay, the next part I’ll tell like this: the girl feels like sobbing when it’s all over. The boy moves to turn on the inside light of the car and the girl slaps his hand away from the switch. Straightens up her clothes in the back seat, in the semi-blackness, and then opens the door and steps out of the car for a moment, transferring back into the front passenger seat.
In the Neighbourhood of Fame Page 10