Says: ‘Take me home please,’ without turning to look at him.
‘Come on,’ the boy says in a soft voice from the back seat. ‘You said you wanted it, so don’t go flipping your lid on me now.’
‘You should have used something. You said you were going to use something.’
‘Yeah, didn’t quite manage that. It’s okay, though, you never get pregnant first time anyway.’
‘Shut up, Dylan. You don’t know anything, you dumbarse.’ The girl just wants to get home, and get into a bath, and wash him off her, out of her. ‘Drive me right now.’
‘Okay, okay, keep your hair on,’ the boy says. Rustling sound of him pulling up his jeans. Not in any hurry. The girl thinks it might just be her imagination, but there is something quite conquering in the way he pulls up the zip of his fly. ‘Besides,’ the boy drawls, and it is obvious an attempt at some lame joke is coming, ‘my swimmers are probably so zoned out from the bud they’d forget where they were supposed to go anyway.’
She hates him, and hates herself for letting him.
And Wolf’s car is disgusting. Stinks like something died inside it. When they’d moved into the back seat they’d had to shove Big Mac containers onto the floor. As soon as she got in she knew it would be all wrong, but she was the one that had crazily, sneakily rigged it up with Sas, and once Wolf had chucked the keys over to Dylan and said in a loaded tone – ‘Why don’t you take Haley for a drive’ – it already felt like it was a done deal.
By the time he’s driving her home she can hardly bear that he’s audibly breathing in and out through his mouth. The yeastiness of his body odour has settled in her nostrils. She can still taste his mayonnaise breath inside her mouth. She’d felt how pimply his back was. It hadn’t been sexy, all that fiddling around trying to get it in. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes or his pants, and the pain, and now she suspects that he hadn’t done it before either. Know-nothing idiot.
She wanted it to feel different. Thought it would be like passing through some kind of passage, like boarding a plane and stepping off in another country with a new special sense about her.
She gets out of the car and Dylan says, ‘It’ll be better the next time.’
As if.
So here I am in my girl’s bedroom, with the red-rose curtains on the window that my mother sewed up for me when I was ten, and my wall of posters, and the stickers that I once collected from apples and bananas and pasted into a heart pattern on the back of the door, and with my sentimental bedside light that throws shadows of unicorns onto the wall at night, thinking, Shit happens, no big deal, nothing much has changed. Not as easy to look my mother in the eye. Not as easy to think of visiting Sas’s house. Have to keep deleting his stupid texts from my phone. And not quite as natural to go out, even to go and walk Rochester. Dylan has an out there presence, like an unpredictable stray that roams the neighbourhood and might suddenly rear up from behind a corner. But life rolls on. At least am no longer a big fat V.
Seemed like the idea of getting rid of it would be like overcoming an obstacle, like finally climbing up over the ridge that blocked the view of a better, more grown-up world beyond. But now it feels like I’ve been suckered and the real prize at the end of it all is just a chiming disappointment. And actually feel sad now too. Have lost something I’ll never have again. Not just lost, totally wasted it.
Stupid Dylan tried to pretend he was so smooth at first. Stroked my hair, but so clumsily his fingers kept catching and pulling. Started by rubbing a finger over the material of my undies and saying, ‘Relax. I know what I’m doing.’
‘You won’t …’ I began.
But he broke in with, ‘Shhh, relax. I can tell you haven’t had much experience. Just trust me.’
Putting his hand inside my undies he said, ‘Mmm, bush. Old school.’
Sas finally catches up with me before class and asks what happened. Say: ‘Nothing.’
‘What? You didn’t do it?’
‘Nope, nothing happened.’
‘But he told Wolf …’
‘He’s a dickless liar then. Nothing happened. Big fat zero. And let’s not mention it again.’
‘So Dylan’s history?’
Put two fingers to my mouth and make a gagging sound. Sas laughs.
In one of Jed Jordan’s songs there are some lines … my mind is stuck on the place you took me to / the weightless fall / the breath-held topple / into the perfect void … and now whenever I hear them I think, That’s it. That’s what it should really be like.
Evie
Whenever my eyes landed on my son I searched for clues. He was currently Vince’s height, but he had the potential to be as tall as Jed. His hair was dark like Vince’s, but also like my father’s. His skin tanned easily, which could almost have come from Jed, but was also like my mum’s brothers. He had eyes like mine, ears like mine, a nose like my father’s. His walk was more of a scuttle than a pleasing, confident lope. He scowled, especially lately, had little charm and no discernible musical talent. But he did have timing – he could dance (or used to, he simply wouldn’t now) – and he could hold a tune.
But anyway, why did it even matter? My father was of above-average height, my mother was average height. My aunt, my uncles, cousins, my son. Not me. So where did that come from? Some less-hit spot on the family dartboard?
As the days passed and I put yet more batter into Dad’s unpredictable old Atlas, and washed up the bowls and whisks and wooden spoons and sifters, suspecting that I was investing far too much in the power of my one indisputable skill, I looked out the kitchen window and let scraps of another distant teenage life hurtle back to me: ‘Beware the supersonic pool-emptying missile!’ yelled many years ago as Jed balled his teenaged body up and spun himself with great physical competency into the Para from the top rung of the balcony, the wash memorably lifting us all onto the pool’s rim. The red beads he used to wear around his neck as if to say, even at that age, that he was enough of a man never to be mistaken for anything else. The way he introduced us all to the music and the affectations of the Ramones, the New York Dolls. The afternoon we pretended to shoot up using sticks, and lay around in the bush hut we had renamed the Factory in a fake heroin daze, with the Velvet Underground & Nico as our soundtrack.
There were no discernible clues about Dylan in any of that.
From where I stood I could see the corrugated roof-tops of Jed’s sheds, and often noticed the way the sun flared brightly off the metal. Sometimes they seemed to beckon with potential. Which one was the great depository, I often wondered, sheltering all the latent tunes, where jobbing horn-players turned up to do their bit?
On the day Jed finally invited me in, we’d been sitting on the bench seat as usual when a fast-moving squall punched its way into the garden, harassing the plants, tousling the treetops, running a heavy sprinkle of rain across everything and then moving off as if playing a quick joke. We’d sheltered briefly under the eaves of the shed, and in the squall’s wake the sun burst down, reflecting wildly off the panes, glistening the lawn, a cheerful conspirator. It was mood-lifting, optimistic. The world refreshed.
‘So do you want to see my studio?’ Jed asked.
We entered the shed and walked past tools and branded cartons and packing paraphernalia, and then through an interior door that led to a back room where he had a drum kit set up, and some guitars and speakers, and a number of mics wired into a computer. Egg cartons were stapled to the walls, I assumed for some acoustic purpose.
‘So,’ I said, trying to repress evidence of my excitement. ‘The inner sanctum?’
He pushed some buttons and played first one version, and then a second, of a new song he was working on. He wanted to know which one I liked best. I didn’t have the ears to hear any difference in the two songs, and when I confessed this he told me that the snare drum was more upfront in one version. He played them again, and I could only just tell which one had the louder snare, and barely knew how to differentiate the sou
nd of a snare drum anyway. He was either humble enough, or insecure enough, to ask for an opinion from somebody who had only the same level of discernment as every other average person on the planet. I watched the cursor move across the waving line on the computer screen as he played the songs through a third time. He was beginning to show some anxiety, chewing on the nail on his thumb. The words started to come into focus, and to my inexpert ears they were good. A deliciously cynical song about knowing what I know / and doing what I do / and bluffing if I need to / to stay ahead of you.
Actually, now that I was really listening, cynical wasn’t quite the right word. It was darkly charged and yet accessible at the same time. And the tone, the way he was singing it – there was a knowingness about it that was so playfully sly it bordered on self-mocking. I was no aficionado, but it was musically interesting too, the melody almost like something you already knew, but also not quite like anything you’d heard before.
bluffing if I need to / to stay ahead of you …
That sounded like what it was to be a mother. And what it was to be a son. My boy was constantly operating a bluff, having moved off onto his own island, into manhood with all its secret motives and furtive new initiatives. I’ve got to find a way to get more on top of things. These days if I ask him about girls or friends he tells me to mind my beeswax. If I ask him if he’s doing drugs he says nah. If I try to ground him he sneaks out of the house anyway. And a few days ago he and his friend were sitting on the back veranda, talking quietly but unaware a window above them was open, their voices carrying right into the kitchen.
‘So? Did ya drill her?’ his friend asked Dylan.
Dylan didn’t say anything in reply, but presumably indicated assent in some form because his friend said, ‘On ya, mate. What was it like?’
‘Yeah, okay I s’pose,’ my son replied.
I’ve dealt with that badly, hopelessly. The information came to me incidentally, and I couldn’t think of a good way to broach it. I haven’t asked him if he was nice to the girl, safe with the girl, respectful of the girl. He was seventeen now – was that old enough to allow him his own scruples? Have I done a good enough job for that?
But then my scruples might not be totally in the clear either. I spent yesterday sitting at Vince’s bedside, waiting for him to drop to sleep, debating with myself the morality of reaching into my handbag and, without his permission, swabbing the inside of his mouth with the long-stemmed, sterile cotton bud that arrived in the mail a few days ago … knowing what I know / and doing what I do … He was wakeful and didn’t really understand who I was, but was happy to have somebody to talk to. Or rather talk at. Mostly I just let him rave on, saying whatever uncensored junk was in his head. Sitting there, listening to him talk – about how a snail can sleep for a three-year stretch, and how by the end of its life a whale could have swum to the moon, and how the footprints left on the moon by the astronauts will stay there for at least 10 million years because there is no erosion – gave me the same deliverance, I imagined, that cutting your arms might have for some people. It was somehow enlivening, a rebellion against myself, and a reminder, too, of what a fragile gift existence is.
When a nurse stepped into the room and told me his lunch would be coming soon, asking if I wanted to stay for that, I was almost relieved that opportunity had been denied me for the day. I wasn’t all that certain I wanted the definite answer.
‘You think the song is shit, don’t you?’ Jed said.
‘No, I like it. I love it.’
I looked at him chewing on his thumbnail, and it occurred to me that he could show me this uncertain and slightly neurotic side of himself because there was no sexual tension there for him, there was nothing to contrive. I was little more than a mate. On the other hand, I pretended a lack of anxiety around him because really I was quite tightly wound up, always feeling like I was having to hold myself back from jettisoning forward and physically attaching myself to him.
‘I don’t know the difference between the two, but I like it, a lot.’ I was starting to wonder what gave this song its genesis. His marriage? If that was the case, then it didn’t speak of a great, unreserved love.
‘Do you think it’s ready?’ he asked.
‘I would say a resounding yes, but you do realise that my expertise in these matters is somewhat limited.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. I think I’ll just work on it some more.’
This was a difficult moment for me, to be let in on the vulnerability that lay alongside his talent. It was very attractive.
‘So does this all mean you are definitely intending a new release?’
‘Maybe.’ His expression was blank but I felt that single word resonate in me deeply, bodily, as a kind of internal excitement. It was almost erotic, as if I’d said to him, Is there a future for you and me? and that was what he’d answered. But why did I feel it like this? Like his future was my future too? That everything would turn when his new music found its way out into the world?
‘Because I’ve been hearing rumours.’
‘Have you?’ he replied, amused.
We were interrupted at that moment by a girl running into the shed, yelling about a tourniquet.
Lauren
You are rummaging in your bag for your phone, in a street that doesn’t belong to you, having let a sob escape you (attracting a concerned look but not a full acknowledgement from a passing traffic warden), knowing that you have just compromised yourself in some incalculable way, and a little dazed with the idea that you now have some work to do to renew your citizenship in a world that you have been taking for granted. And when you turn your mobile back on there are five messages from that world. Jed. Ringing from the emergency department. Jaspar has cut his foot. Lots of blood, but he’s going to be okay. Over the five calls, Jed’s tone goes from barely contained panic to annoyance. ‘Lauren, where the hell are you?’
You get there just as the doctor, a young woman, is finishing off the last couple of stitches. Somebody must have said something funny, and you enter the cubicle on the tail-end of laughter, arriving all dishevelled in the dread and rush. The smiles fade quickly.
‘He’s all right, he’s fine,’ Jed says on seeing your face. He half-turns and says, ‘This is my wife, Lauren.’
‘Oh, but I thought …’ the doctor begins, and then stops herself. She glances up, you notice, to catch Jed’s eye.
‘Nine stitches,’ Jaspar announces, as if he’s won them. ‘I cut my foot on a glass, but I was brave, wasn’t I, Dad?’
You bend to give him a series of kisses on his forehead, and the doctor says, ‘We missed the important arteries. It should heal well, but no sports for him for a while.’
Jaspar flashes you a private smile. ‘Bonus,’ he whispers into your hair. His breath is terrible.
His friend Kylie is standing at the doctor’s elbow like an observing pre-med, watching the needle pierce skin with a fascination that’s just plain ghoulish. From the expression on her face it’s obvious her small mind is turning over all the ways she can make this experience into a legend for school tomorrow.
There’s a vaguely awkward silence while the doctor ties the last knot, and you have the impression your sudden appearance has ruined something. What was the joke? What was going on? Jed, no doubt, was being cute with her. He always turns his charm-button up to full force in any vaguely serious situation. And she’s not unattractive, the doctor, with an air about her that says she’s accustomed to people being impressed by her. Had she thought she was on to something? Did she mean to say, Oh, but I thought you were solo?
Panadol is prescribed, which seems on the inadequate side when a gash and blood loss and stitches are involved.
‘Keep him off that foot, and bring him back in seven days to have the stitches removed. Or sooner if you’re worried,’ the doctor says, looking up into Jed’s face. ‘Here’s my card and my cellphone number if you need it.’ She blushes very slightly as she hands it to him. ‘For an emerge
ncy, I mean.’
‘Sure, what else?’ Jed replies, in a teasing tone. He’s used to people being awkward and sometimes inappropriate around him. He always plays along, and even encourages it. Women often mistake it for flirting. Usually you don’t care, but on this occasion you feel annoyed, and glare at the doctor. You are the patient’s mother after all, not invisible, not irrelevant.
Jaspar lies across the back seat of the car, with his bandaged foot in Kylie’s lap, where it’s cradled gently like it’s a precious newborn. You manage to wait only until you’re halfway home to say, ‘What was with Miss Flirtypants?’ You try to make your voice as airy as possible, with those two kids in the back, ears flapping.
‘Who?’ Jed asks, all innocence.
‘You know who.’
‘She used to like listening to ‘Breathe in, breathe out’ when she was studying for her finals,’ Kylie offers from the back.
‘Really? So you helped her become a doctor, did you, with your inspirational songs?’
‘Yes, Madam Sarcastic, I believe I did,’ he replies. ‘How could it have happened otherwise?’
‘And she said she used to go and see Dad perform all the time,’ says Jaspar in a cracked, tired voice that also contains some pride.
‘That must have been a while ago,’ you mutter under your breath.
‘And she said she thought he was a big hairy sexy beast,’ Kylie contributes, collapsing into giggles.
‘Shut up,’ Jaspar says, kicking Kylie lightly with his good foot, and in an earnest voice adds: ‘She didn’t say that, Mum. She didn’t.’
His plaintiveness tamps down the rising tide of irrational white-hot anger that is bubbling up within you. You know you’re in danger of getting everything out of proportion today.
In the Neighbourhood of Fame Page 11