The Seven Steps to Closure

by Donna Joy Usher

  I was onto my second coffee when I heard the banging on my front door.

  ‘Seriously,’ I said to Bad Bunny, who was lying in a patch of sun on the carpet, ‘Why can’t people just knock? Why do they always have to bang?’

  I opened the door to find Elaine, slightly stooped over and puffing.

  ‘You ran up my stairs?’

  ‘Worse,’ she said as she passed me heading for the kitchen. She helped herself to a glass of water. ‘I couldn’t get a park so I ran all the way down the street and then up your stairs.’

  ‘You missed me. That’s really sweet.’

  ‘Actually I thought you might be interested in reading this.’

  She pulled Benny out of her handbag and then a magazine, which she flicked onto the table. Benny ran over to sniff Bad Bunny, who opened one eye and then perceiving no threat closed it and went back to sleep. Benny flopped down next to him in the sun.

  ‘He’s tired,’ Elaine observed of Bad Bunny.

  ‘He spent all night shagging his teddy bear.’

  ‘I’m surprised Benny’s gone anywhere near him after what happened last time.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been nice being humped in the head like that,’ I agreed.

  ‘Does he shag his bear back to front?’

  ‘Back to front, on the side, upside down, he is quite partial to a sixty-niner though.’ I gestured at the magazine. ‘Not another closure article?’

  ‘Not even close, go on read it.’

  I picked up the magazine and joined her on the couch.

  ‘Travel Abroad?’ I asked her. ‘You want me to go overseas again?’

  ‘I think you’ll find it interesting reading.’

  The cover of the magazine had a beautiful photo of a location that I recognised immediately.

  ‘That’s the lily pool at the Floating Palace in Udaipur,’ I said. I looked a little closer and let out a gasp. ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’ I knelt beside the pool wrapped in a sarong, running my fingertips through the water.

  ‘I thought it was. I couldn’t be sure because it’s taken from such a distance.’

  I read the front cover searching for something about the photo. ‘Romantic Rajasthan.’ I stopped and looked at Elaine thoughtfully. ‘It’s Matt’s article?’ I asked her.

  ‘You’re not very smart this early in the morning, are you?’

  ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night. BB got up quite a rhythm and one of teddy’s eyes was banging on the floor.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’

  ‘Didn’t have the heart – at least one of us was getting some.’

  ‘If you don’t read this damn article you definitely won’t be getting any.’

  I flicked to page 21 and began to read.

  ‘India – a country of contradictions. After five years in India I thought I’d seen it all. I’ve seen riches right next to poverty, gluttony next to starvation and watched new life emerge amongst a field of death. But never before, had I watched it unfold through another’s eyes. Never before had I touched India, tasted India or felt India the way I did recently. Sharing India with someone special amplified my reactions to it. This new India was about quiet companionship amongst a fairy garden land. It was strolling hand in hand through abandoned forts and rambling streets. It was watching sunsets over lakes. This India was made of magic, woven about me by a web of romance.‘

  The article went on for a few pages talking about our travels through Rajasthan. It never referred to me by name, instead mentioning me in an ambiguous way. I was the ghost that walked with him through his journey. Most of the spectacular photos featured me in some way, but in none of them could you have pointed at it and said, ‘Hey isn’t that Tara Babcock?’ I was a silhouette, or slightly unfocused against a spectacular backdrop, or just so far away that I was unidentifiable.

  He had written an article called Romantic Rajasthan, and when he talked about someone special adding a magical ingredient to a previously well-known dish, he was referring to me. He was getting married in, I checked my watch, forty minutes, and I was sitting on my lounge, with crumbs on my pyjamas and a full on bed head.

  ‘Shit.’ I jumped up and started running around my apartment.

  ‘Tara. What are you doing?’

  ‘Getting ready,’ I said as I ran into the bathroom, and then back out as I forgot what I had gone in there for. I entered the kitchen and then ran back into the lounge.

  ‘Tara. Stop.’

  I froze looking at Elaine.

  ‘What…. Are…. You…. Doing?’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I have to stop the wedding.’

  ‘Thank God. That’s the first sane thing you’ve said all morning. Right – into the shower.’

  I nodded stupidly and ran for the shower.

  ‘Make it quick,’ she yelled after me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I called back.

  ‘Getting out your clothes.’

  Elaine had me out the door in less than 10 minutes. We sprinted up the road to her car and I jumped into the passenger seat as she roared away from the kerb.

  ‘We’ve got twenty-five minutes,’ she said.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, suddenly aware that I wasn’t sure where the wedding was. I know they must have mentioned it on the radio but I seemed to have blocked it totally out of my mind.

  ‘Coogee Golf Course.’ Elaine dodged around another car, narrowly missing a parked one. ‘Damn Sunday drivers,’ she grunted.

  I checked my seatbelt was done up securely. ‘It’s Saturday,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t get all pedantic on me.’ She pulled up next to another car at the lights and revved the engine as if she was in a drag race. When the light turned green, she floored the accelerator and shot past the other car, before merging in front of it. ‘Pussy,’ she chuckled.

  ‘What part of the golf course?

  ‘Fifth hole at the stack.’ She pulled on the hand break as she skidded around a corner.

  ‘Jesus Elaine, did you just do a hand break turn?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Where the hell did you learn to do that?’

  ‘When I was in high school I lost my virginity to a racing car driver. He taught me a couple of interesting things.’

  ‘About driving?’

  ‘That – and he taught me how to handle a gear stick properly.’

  She shot me a grin, and then put her foot to the floor as the light ahead of us turned yellow. We sailed through it just before it blinked to red. After a few minutes, I realised even with Elaine’s amazing driving skills we were taking far too long to get to Coogee. The traffic was horrific and more often than not, we were stationary or crawling at a snail’s pace.

  I groaned, the suspense starting to get to me. Elaine checked her watch – swore – and then navigated her car up onto the curb.

  ‘Shit,’ I said as I hung onto the door.

  She lent on the horn as she drove along the pavement.

  ‘Sorry,’ she yelled as we sailed past some pedestrians. ‘My friend’s in labour.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said, thinking of Lil. Panicking, I searched in my handbag certain I had left the pager Lil had given me on the kitchen bench. Feeling it in the palm of my hand I pulled it out and looked at it puzzled.

  ‘I put it in there,’ said Elaine. ‘Thought you might need it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Finally we arrived in Coogee to a total gridlock.

  ‘Oh shit, the wedding,’ said Elaine.

  ‘Yeah I know, that’s why we’re here,’ I said, totally panicked.

  ‘No, I mean the traffic from the wedding. I’ll never get us there in time, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to get a park. You’re going to have to run from here. Ring me later if you need me to pick you up. Good luck.’

  I jumped out of the car and started pelting down the road in the direction Elaine had pointed. I was starting to sweat no
t just from the running, or the heat, or the fact that I was probably too late, but from the thought of what I was attempting to do. I was going to be the one that jumped up at the part that said, ‘Is there anyone here who knows why these two should not be wed?’ And what was I planning to say?

  ‘Hi, yeah I’ve known Matt for about two months, well actually about four if you count from the night we had casual sex, and I think that as I know him better than you that I should at least have the opportunity to date him.’

  Hmmmm or, ‘Matthew I think that I might have fallen in love with you and I’d like to get a chance to find out.’

  Better I guess, but whichever way I looked at it, it was pretty pathetic. As Dad always said, ‘If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.’

  I reached the front of the golf course and stopped. Where the hell did I go? How was I going to get there in time and how was I going to get past those bouncers?

  The bouncers, it turned out, were the easy part. I just smiled prettily at them and waltzed on through the doors like I owned the place. As soon as I was out the other side and onto the green I broke into a trot.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I asked to an old man standing by a golf cart, ‘which way is the fifth hole.’

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘If you just take your pretty self off in that direction for about fifteen minutes you can’t help but eventually stumble across the fifth hole. You’ll know it because there will be a whole heap of people at it, some wedding or something. The whole golf course has closed down. Nobody’s allowed to hit a ball in case they hit a guest. And Saturday’s my golfing day too. Sunday the missus makes me take her to the grocery store, and Mondays we play bingo. Tuesday we play Mah Jong, and Wednesdays we go down to Wollongong and visit our daughter. Thursday’s we have my wife’s sister over for lunch, and Fridays we go to the library, so as you can see that only leaves me Saturday to play golf.’

  I was standing with my mouth wide open trying to find an entrance into the conversation that would allow me to politely excuse myself and start the fifteen-minute stroll to the fifth hole. I didn’t have two minutes let alone fifteen, what was I going to do? The old dude was still going when I had my idea.

  ‘And they are doing a photo shoot of some politician up at the sixth hole. How they’re doing a photo shoot for a golfing magazine without hitting a ball I’ll never know. What are they going to take a photo of?’

  ‘Oh look,’ I said, pointing behind him, ‘there’s Elvis.’

  The old man swung his head around, and I jumped into his golf cart looking for the key. I saw a button which said Start and pressed it.

  ‘Where’s Elvis?’ he said. ‘I can’t see him.’

  The buggy roared to life and putting my foot to the floor I zoomed off before the man turned back around. ‘Hey,’ I heard him yell, ‘where’s Elvis gone?’

  ‘I’m going to find him for you,’ I yelled back.

  ‘Thank youoooooo.’ I could hear his reply echoing after me as I shot along the course.

  If I hadn’t been so nervous I would have been enjoying myself immensely. No one had ever told me how much fun these things were. Plus the view out over the water was spectacular. I made a mental note to see if Elaine wanted to learn to play golf. We could spend all day whizzing around in these things and then head off to the club for some drinkies afterwards.

  Finally in the distance I saw a huge crowd. I pulled the buggy to a halt on top of a hill overlooking the wedding and could see Matt standing at an altar, next to a woman in white. She was enormous. And when I say enormous I mean huge. Humungous. A planet. While Matt towered above her, she dwarfed him in width. I felt a smile twitch the corner of my mouth. I would have loved to have seen the look on his face when he first saw her. Obviously one of the three questions he should have asked was, ‘How much do you weigh?’ Or better yet, ‘Have you ever been mistaken for a whale?’

  My smile was wiped right off my face when I heard the minister’s next words. ‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’

  Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuckfuck. I was too late. I couldn’t believe it.

  I saw Matt turn to the beached white whale and, lifting her veil, lean down to kiss her. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch it. If I just close my eyes for long enough, I thought reassuringly, they’ll all be gone when I open them, and then I can pretend that nothing ever happened.

  It was the noise that made me open my eyes. A weird sound getting louder and louder, closer and closer, making me unsuccessfully search my memory of sounds to determine what it was.

  THWAAAAACKKKKKK.

  Then, a noise like a whip cracking, as something small and very, very hard pummelled into my thigh. I let out a huge bellow of pain, causing the entire crowd at the wedding to look up the hill. Letting out another cry I collapsed to the ground, clutching my leg. I rolled face first into the soft grass and felt a sharp pain in my mouth as I rolled onto my side.

  ‘Aiyeeeeee.’ I let out another loud cry, following it with, ‘Pfhwwhhwww,’ as I tried unsuccessfully to spit out whatever was in my mouth. It seemed to have attached itself to my tongue.

  I could hear someone saying, ‘Sir, I think you’ve hit somebody.’

  And then a familiar voice say, ‘Have I? Damn, what were they doing up the top? I thought they’d all be down at the wedding.’

  I stuck my tongue out a far as it would go and looked down at it, cross eyed, turning my head to get some better light. Oh Fuck. I had a bee stuck to the end of my tongue. A bee had stung me on the tongue. What the fuck was a bee doing here? It was a golf course – there was no clover or flowers for miles to attract a bee. And then I realised……. the flowers from the wedding. I had gotten stung on the tongue by a bee from the radio slut’s bouquet. Fucking baby’s breath. This was just great.

  Very carefully, breathing through my panic, I grasped the bee while resisting the urge to squeal at the feel of it wriggling between my fingers, and I plucked it from my tongue. I examined him. (I was definitely thinking of the bee as a him.) He was missing his sting which could only mean one thing. It was still in my tongue. I whimpered a little, resisting the natural urge to put my tongue back in my mouth to swallow, and poked it out as far as it would go.

  ‘Chooor, get a load of this,’ I heard someone say, with a laugh in their voice.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ someone else asked.

  Ignoring them, I focused on my tongue trying to get the sting before it pumped more venom into me. And then I heard two different men say my name in two entirely different ways; one affectionate and amused, the other annoyed and intolerant, and the old man whose golf cart I had stolen’s, words popped back into my head.

  ‘Some politician having a photo shoot for a golfing magazine.’

  Oh great. That was all I needed. My first meeting with Jake since I had left, and I had to be sitting on a golf course with a dead leg and a rapidly swelling tongue.

  Matt leant down in front of me and shook his head, obviously amused by what he saw.

  ‘Tara?’

  In answer I held up the bee in my hand and pointed to my tongue.

  ‘He bit you on the tongue?’

  ‘Stung you mean,’ I heard Jake say spitefully, ‘bees don’t bite.’

  ‘Did you hear that? She got stung on the tongue by a bee,’ said someone from the rapidly expanding crowd.

  ‘First she got hit in the leg by a golf ball,’ someone else said.

  ‘Blimey. That’s a bad day. That’s a day you shouldn’t have bothered getting out of bed for.’

  I was definitely inclined to agree with whoever that was.

  Ignoring them, Matt reached out and gently turned my head so he could see my tongue from side on. ‘There it is,’ he said and plucked it out.

  I lay down in relief, fighting the tears that were threatening to come. The media was all around me joking, laughing and taking photos. It was my worst nightmare come true. Actually, it was worse that my worst nightmare.
Never could my imagination have conjured up a scene that had me witness the man I thought I loved marry a stranger, before being whacked in the leg by a golf ball, (hit by my ex-husband, the Mayor of Sydney while he posed for a magazine cover), which made me fall to the ground and get a bee in my mouth, (probably from the bouquet of the stranger the man I loved had just married), which then stung me. It was the oxymoron of my motorbike fantasy.

  ‘Hey look, she can’t fit her tongue in her mouth anymore,’ someone said in amusement.

  It was true. I groaned softly. My tongue was swelling at a fast pace. It filled my mouth and the very tip was being forced beyond my lips. This was my punishment for laughing at how fat radio slut was. Why did I always get punished while no one who did nasty things to me seemed to?

  Matt leant down and took a closer look at me. ‘Can you breathe?’ he asked in concern.

  Of course I could until he asked me. Then I got into such a panic that I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. I started flapping my hands around while I sucked in lungful after lungful of air.

  ‘Ten bucks says she passes out,’ someone – I think it was the golf caddy – said.

  ‘Nar that’s not a fair bet, look at her, if she doesn’t pass out it’ll be a miracle.’

  ‘All right, ten bucks says she doesn’t make it,’ he amended.

  ‘What? Like dead doesn’t make it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All right, I’ll take that bet,’ said his friend.

  I gave the two men as nasty a look as I could summon as I continued to pant and gasp for breath.

  ‘Ignore them,’ said Matt, standing up and flipping open his mobile phone. ‘Ambulance,’ I heard him say, and then, ‘hello we’re on the fifth hole at the Coogee Golf Course. We have a female here, thirty years of age, who’s been stung on her tongue by a bee.’ He paused. ‘No, this is not a joke. Her tongue is swelling rapidly and she is in need of urgent medical attention.’

  Urgent Medical Attention? I didn’t want to die. I’m too young, I thought, I have too much to live for.