Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  It was tough for a couple of months there, but things are starting to fit into place, I think.

  That’s good to hear.

  The baby’s well. Lily. She’s doing really well.

  He nods at that too.

  Roscoe, Mel . . . these things happen.

  Yeah . . . I did a term as her father’s resident in about 1972. Did I ever tell you that?

  Yeah, I think so. On one of our antenatal visits, probably.

  Ashley’s going to come and see me next week, so that we can get on top of this, he says, and finishes his scotch. But she’ll be right for tonight, and the rest of the weekend. She’s in bed now. I thought that was better than the floor. He forces a smile. So I might be off. Might go home and watch that tape.

  Okay. Well, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. I might have over-reacted a bit there, calling you, but she looked pretty bad and I didn’t want to mess around.

  It’s no problem. Any time. If you’ve got any worries, call me. The Bill can keep. But this’ll be okay, so don’t be too concerned. At the door, he shakes my hand and says, It’s good to see you. Good to see you looking all right.

  When he’s gone, I go to check how Ash is. She’s not in the spare room. I walk in, and the bed is as made as it was after my parents last stayed, and I wonder where she is, if something’s not right.

  I only get one door down the hall before I see her. In my room, in my bed, the hall light coming in as far as the bedside table, but putting enough diffuse light in there that I can see her, curled up. I walk in – doing a quiet check of her breathing, I realise, once I’m most of the way to the bed. I’m too used to checking on Lily.

  I stop, and I watch her. Her head on the pillow, facing this way, but with her hand there to brush the light off, and now half-closed with sleep and covering only one eye.

  She wakes and sees me, says, Oh . . . I’m sorry about all this.

  It’s quite all right.

  No, I should just go home.

  That’s not likely, really. Now, you’re okay? Is there anything you want?

  No. I wish I felt better. How can a normal process be so foul?

  Well, hopefully Roscoe can do something about that.

  I walk over to the bed and she reaches out and takes my hand.

  Thanks. He gave me something. It’s getting better. It hasn’t been this bad before, but it’s better now. I was hoping I could keep it to myself earlier, but obviously not. And I think I need to lie down.

  Which is exactly why you aren’t going home.

  So take a seat.

  She lets go of my hand and pats the bed. I sit there and she starts to doze. Her hair is spiking up here and there, and I stroke it back into place without thinking. She holds my hand there, and it seems to be a signal. I sit, stroking her hair. She curls up, so that she’s almost curled around me. Her knees bump into me and her eyes open again.

  Hi.

  Hi. I should warn you. If I stay here any longer, there’s a risk I could sing.

  I wouldn’t mind.

  When she’s properly asleep, I leave the room.

  But I don’t sleep myself, even when it gets late. I check Lily, I check Ash. Elvis follows me on my rounds.

  Chicks hey? I say to him. You’ve got to watch them.

  I make another cup of tea and he sits nearby, staring at me, giving me the stare that says, What madness is this? Where the hell did our routine go tonight? And when did you start liking tea?

  I’m becoming my mother, aren’t I? I admit to him. This is my third cup today.

  I screw the top back on the scotch bottle. I haven’t seen Roscoe since the funeral. We probably talked then. I don’t remember.

  The bottle was his. His well-known favourite, bought to give to him on the day when Mel and the baby would have been discharged from hospital. A thank you for seeing us through it all, delivering Lily, making sure everything went to plan. Which it didn’t, and the scotch sat there.

  Mel’s death was nothing to do with Roscoe. It really was just one of those things. I’ve never seen him respond so quickly. It simply didn’t work. He’s good. I don’t know who’s the best (if there needs to be a best), but he’s good. I should have talked to him months ago. But that was never going to happen. And that has to be okay.

  Mel’s father was a surgeon. A surgeon of the old school, a big surgeon. Which meant big incisions, heroic procedures and an expectation that crowded hospital corridors would part before him. Which they did. He died when we were at uni, before I really knew Mel and before I’d heard much about him. He lingered as a phenomenon, in the way patients revered him, in the sweep of his scars across abdomens.

  Mel was an only child, born when her parents were both in their forties. She was, it seems, something of a surprise. She was always spoiled, and always destined to do medicine. Mel didn’t even know she was spoiled. She thought childhood was about getting everything you wanted, preferably right when you wanted it, and that affection fitted in around that, as part of it, somewhere. So we weren’t going to be similar as adults.

  She liked my parents, once she worked out that they did things differently. She never quite worked out the basis of the difference, though. They were younger than parents, as far as she was concerned, and that’s what she put it down to. She never questioned the way her own mother and father had been.

  My parents took a while to adjust to her, but they got there. It was my mother who had named my dirty-dog phase, after all, and Mel was clearly something new. They were amused at the way she organised me. I always thought you needed one of those, my father said. And maybe I did, sometimes.

  Her mother’s death in 1995 was unexpected. She was in her seventies, but she seemed healthy and her family had a history of long life. Longer life than that. So we had one set of parents to share from then on. A set of parents who were particularly good about that. About Mel’s birthday, about doing things with her and treating her as more than simply the person I’d married. The ‘morally wrong’ cut of her wedding dress became something she and my mother could laugh about.

  Mel inherited everything her mother had owned. We sold the family home. Since we’d come back from England Mel had been trying to get her mother to sell it and move to somewhere smaller, so it didn’t surprise me that we didn’t keep it. It covered our share of the practice start-up costs. It also let us upgrade from our own small house to something much larger – too many bedrooms, I thought, but it didn’t seem fair to get in the way of Mel calling the shots. And it gave her the first of her two BMWs.

  So our money was Mel’s money. At least, that’s how we came upon it. And the last of our debts was paid off by her life insurance.

  That’s all easier to accept if I tell myself the money’s Lily’s, not mine. I’m holding it in trust for her, in an informal way.

  And Roscoe got no closer to knowing how Ash fitted in than being told she was from up north. And I said it as though I take in strays from there, and it needs no further explanation. How do I deal with that? He’s seeing her in a few days. Should I call him? What would I say if I did? No-one’s forced me to define this relationship before, not seriously. Does any definition, any attempt to define it only lead back to ‘dirty old man’, or is that just George getting to me? I can’t see myself calling Roscoe and trying anything about a running buddy.

  I watch TV with the sound down, and I’ve got a choice of old movies. Two black-and-white versions of people falling madly, stupidly in love with each other, and one in colour. Epic situations, swollen soundtracks, hardly a regular experience in there.

  I channel-surf mindlessly, slide down into the sofa and sleep till my dry, open mouth wakes me, and it’s almost light and someone’s demonstrating a mop on a home shopping show. The compere says, That’s truly remarkable, and I miss those old movies, and all their more sincere lies.

  20

  Next, I wake having one of those trapped dreams. I’m lying on the sofa, with Elvis folded up innocently on my shi
ns, looking at me with a more pleading version of last night’s stare. A please get things back to normal stare. Please go and sleep in the usual place, so there’ll be more room for me.

  Lily wakes and makes noise, so I take her out to the verandah. I bounce her up and down. I point to things and name them. She settles. They’re all things I’ve named before. I’m boring her early in life.

  I make breakfast for Ash while she’s still in bed, another thing I’ve never done for anyone before. I hope it goes better than the flowers.

  I don’t get this at home, she says.

  It’s only toast and coffee and juice. We don’t even have a tray. My mother would do it with a tray.

  She arranges the pillows into a position for sitting, and she says, Well, it’s very nice. Thank you.

  So how are you today?

  Not bad. The guy last night, the doctor . . . what was his name?

  Ross Donovan.

  He gave me some sample packs of something, and it’s working pretty well. I’m so embarrassed. It just got really bad over a few minutes. I wasn’t feeling good for about a day, but then it was like . . . you don’t need to know what it was like.

  Don’t be embarrassed about it. Be embarrassed about the way your hair is sticking right up off the top of your head, but don’t be embarrassed about last night.

  Oh my god, she says, and grabs the top of her head with both hands. I must look awful.

  No, you don’t look awful. I was kidding. Don’t you have it cut so that it sort of sticks out anyway? I mean, I know I’m not particularly stylish, but isn’t that, like, a look?

  Only when you mean it to be. It’s supposed to do it at the sides, but it’s not supposed to do it straight up.

  That’s all too complicated for me.

  Every day when I wake up my hair looks ridiculous. It looks like it tried to get away during the night, but it didn’t quite make it. You’re the doctor. Why does some people’s hair go mad overnight, and other people look fine in the morning?

  To make you start the day a couple of inches taller?

  She takes a bite of toast. Yeah, thanks. So you’re saying I’m too short now.

  I’m sure you’re just the right size.

  Very diplomatic.

  I read it in a women’s magazine once. It’s the only safe response when it comes to questions of size. Unless you’re confident it’s something that’s supposed to be tiny or enormous.

  This is so strange, sitting in bed here in yesterday’s clothes, eating toast.

  It’ll work out fine if you’re careful with the crumbs. Now, I’ve got to go out to that welcome-home morning tea for the cat I squished. So why don’t you stay around?

  Are you sure?

  Let me put it another way. Why don’t you stay around, and that way I don’t have to do the time-consuming baby component of a trip across town? I can just get in the car without all the junk, go, suffer for an hour and then come back. All the Lily things are done for the moment, so you’d just have to . . .

  Babysit? Sure. Playing, stories, things like that?

  You’ve got it covered.

  Katie meets me with a smile so forced that I’m sure she’s practised it with me in mind.

  Hello, Jon, she says, with the warmth of an eastern-bloc gymnast executing the next part of a compulsory routine. Come in. Everybody’s here.

  How’s Flag?

  Recovering.

  I don’t imagine he’ll be particularly pleased to see me.

  Well, there might be a bit of ground to make up.

  But, much to Katie’s displeasure, Flag bears no grudges. Among the dozens of potential laps in the house, it’s mine he chooses to sit on. Soon enough he’s kneading away at my pants, purring like a slightly more distant buzz-saw than usual. Of course, this does turn me into some kind of cat cushion, while other people can move on after making the obligatory fuss.

  You have a good time there, boys, George says. The rest of us’ll be out on the deck. And have you seen the catering out there? It’s like Flag fought in a war, we’re so happy he’s home.

  No half measures with our Katie. I’m sure she’s been up all night baking.

  He leaves me to my servitude. More people arrive. Katie and Wendy’s parents, Anita and Ron, take the seats on either side of me.

  Someone stepped on him, I hear, Ron says.

  Yes.

  And his tone is completely non-committal. It could be a joke, but there’s no way of telling.

  Seems like a damn clumsy thing to do.

  It was night-time. I think. And you know how he likes to dash around.

  Hmmm. Well, won’t be much of that for a while, will there? He leans across, gives Flag’s head a scratch. Not too much dashing around for a while, Flag.

  Scratch, scratch. Flag lifts his head, purrs louder, stretches his front legs out and kneads my lap with more vigour.

  Easy on the trousers there, Flaggy, I say to him, and he pays no attention.

  He’s a happy chap, for all that, Ron says, and keeps scratching behind his ears and under his chin. Yes, a happy fella. Baby-talking and scratching him into some state of excitement.

  I move Flag’s paws to the arm of the seat, he moves them back to my pants. I move them to the arm again, he moves them to my groin. Looks up at me with mad eyes and puts a claw through my every defence and into my penis, round about midshaft.

  There’s a good fella, Ron says, as tears come to my eyes and make me blink.

  Flag knows he’s stuck, and twists his paw like a corkscrew in an obstinate cork. It does no good. It does harm.

  Good fella, I say, in an obviously strained way, and I grab his paw and hold it.

  I press on his paw to loosen his grip. He digs in deeper. Looks up at me contentedly as he tilts his head to maximise the chin-stroking angle for Ron. Flaggy loves a game, I seem to remember.

  Yeah, good fella, Ron says. Good fella. Scratching away. Now, there’d be food, wouldn’t there? At one of these? Two more quick pats. Good to see you home. And they go outside.

  I moan, but hopefully to myself. I want to be at home, too. I want the pain to go away. I want to check my penis, first chance I get. Oscar’s near me, standing just inside the French doors, so I call him over.

  You’re going to have to help me, I explain. The cat hates me, I think. He’s got me pronged round about midshaft at the moment.

  What?

  Stop laughing right now. If we get this wrong, I could blow a corpus. I might never fly straight again. And anything I do just makes it worse. So how about I distract him and you sneak in and whip the claw out? Okay?

  Okay.

  And be discreet. Pretend you’re down there for Flag.

  We’ve never got on.

  Put that aside, Oz. Help me here.

  He goes down on his knees, manoeuvres in close to the seat.

  Actually, it’s . . . It’s hard to see exactly which one, which claw . . . He leans in closer, takes the paw delicately in his hand. We’re going to be okay though. I think we’re going to be okay.

  I keep talking to Flag, trying to make soothing noises and doing what I can to take the edge of pain from my voice.

  No writhing, please. No more writhing, Flaggy. We’ll be there any second.

  Oscar moves his head onto my thigh, next to Flag.

  Why do they make them so fluffy? Okay, got the claw . . . And, here we go.

  He pops the claw out, Flag writhes away, rolls off my lap and onto the seat next to me. Anita comes back in through the French doors.

  Oh my lord, she says, seeing Oscar’s head in my lap, his hand on the front of my pants and Flag’s fluffy body obscuring the detail. I’m sorry.

  She backs out onto the deck, looking flustered.

  I’ve got to go and check this, I tell Oscar. Cover for me. Us.

  I run to the bathroom. Or, rather, start running, but change it to a brisk walk. I’m already sending the wrong signals. I don’t need to make things worse. How do I get into the
se situations?

  I lock the bathroom door. I check. There’s a puncture wound where I knew there would be, but I think it’s only superficial. Even if, at the time, it felt as though Flag had pushed it so far it could constitute the kind of body piercing that would allow me to wear a big enough piece of metal to create mystery at airport security.

  A dot of blood wells up out of the puncture, and so does another when I wipe it away. I’d like to avoid applying pressure to stop this. All Flag’s wrenching around has made the area far from comfortable. I pull off a good length of toilet paper and improvise something involving a lot of wrapping. Which, when all is put away, makes me look like I’m trying to tell everyone I’m hung like a donkey, but this isn’t the time to care.

  I go back into the lounge room and Oscar’s still there, or back again.

  I don’t think he penetrated beyond the deep fascia. So . . . what do you think?

  I think, he says, looking at my pants, I think you’re looking very perky today. Is something happening?

  A big wad of toilet paper. There’s active bleeding, you know. I meant, what did you think Anita thought?

  Oh, it’s okay, I cleared that up.

  You told them about the claw.

  No, I just said I was going down on you.

  What?

  It’s okay. I told them it was your birthday.

  I’m going to assume you’re kidding. That’s what I’m going to assume. And your next birthday, you’re still getting socks, okay?

  Sure. I like socks. How about we go outside? And pretend this never happened.

  Good idea.

  And how about you walk like you haven’t spent forty-eight hours in the saddle.

  Also a good idea, but perhaps not possible. We’ll see.

  We walk through the French doors. Everyone stops talking. Oscar gives them a three count. And they sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Several of them, I’m sure, give my pants a lot of attention, but try to be very open-minded.

  There’s throbbing down there. Not good throbbing. I just don’t understand body piercing, do I? Particularly those bits of the body. I stand at an angle, but there’s no angle from which my groin looks small for everybody (a problem I never thought I’d face in my whole life). I should have stayed in the bathroom. Gritted my teeth and applied pressure until the bleeding stopped, and then made do with a simple, non-space-occupying bandaid.