by Nick Earls
Ash coughs, and I hear it rattle. I pass her the cup on the bedside table and she spits up some sooty mucus.
How long does that go on for? she says, looking into the cup.
I don’t know. I do laser skin surgery. I’m next to useless with this stuff.
You couldn’t know what was going to happen that night, when you went drinking.
No, I know.
But I can see why you couldn’t tell your friends all that. Not yet anyway. So try the risky things out on me first, if you want to. If you don’t want to try them on anyone else.
Thanks.
She sighs against my chest, and keeps looking out at the day, at the blue sky tinted darker by the windows.
So let me take a risk then, I say to her, since I seem to be in the mood. Let me tell you some of the best five per cent of what I feel. I know you’re not in love with me. But I might be in love with you. So does that wreck everything?
No. Not at all. What could it wreck? What could be wrong with it really? Shit. I’m so messed up about all this stuff. I should come with warning signs. You don’t know how messed up.
You could tell me.
Yeah. Or I could just demand that you spill everything, and stay nice and quiet myself. That’d be good. You said it was so confusing, when we talked about these things, ages ago. Or you said that things got confused easily.
They’re clear today.
So don’t you run away now. I’m glad you told me. It’s a good kind of thing to know today. Even if that sounds a bit selfish.
It doesn’t.
Good. Thank you.
She looks at me. She’s blinking, frowning, determined to stay composed. Sitting there, propped up in her hospital bed in a crumpled white gown with her hair spiking everywhere, thinking composure might amount to anything today. She moves her arms up around my neck, breathes out, lets a breath slump out of her. She kisses me on the mouth. Kisses me and holds her mouth there, and I can feel her messy hair in my hand, her bare back where the gown hasn’t been done up properly.
Then it’s over. Our mouths are apart again, close but apart, our foreheads touching. Both of us, I’m sure, caught unawares, not knowing what’s next.
I . . .
There’s a nurse at the door. Oh, I’m sorry, he says. Your heart rate just went up on the monitor, and I . . .
I’m okay, Ash says to him, and shakes her head. It’s like school in here. You can’t get away with anything.
Sorry. I had to check.
Well, thanks. I’m okay. He goes, and she looks back at me. I don’t know. I don’t know what that was about, so don’t ask me. Not just yet. I’m sorry. Did I mention I was kind of messed up?
I think you might have. And I think we both know that I’ve had a good go at being messed up myself from time to time, so that’s not a problem.
She nods, smiles, leans back on her pillows.
I want to go home, she says. I don’t like this place. Fuck, I don’t have a home, do I? How bad is it?
George said there’s not much left.
Shit. There’s another pause. I should say something. I don’t know what. Thank god I’m poor. Thank god I don’t own much.
Come to my place. I’ve got plenty of rooms. We can find you a new place while you’re there. And we’ll buy you some clothes. And don’t argue, please. I don’t want to argue again just yet. I think we can be clear enough with each other that I can buy you clothes because you need them, and you owe me nothing. And let dealing with how I feel about you be my problem. Your problem is that your house has burned down, and that’s a bigger problem.
Yeah. I don’t think I own anything at the moment. I even came in in your T-shirt. Shit. I thought my life was bad two days ago, when I had no food, no money and PMS. She laughs. I could have died in that house. And I didn’t.
The consultant comes by on a ward round and clears Ash to go home tomorrow, or later today.
We might have to do some follow-up tests just to be sure there’s no underlying cardiac rhythm problem, he says. But I think that’s very unlikely, and we don’t need to keep you in.
Once he’s gone, Ash says she’ll sleep.
That was good news, wasn’t it? I can take it easy now?
It was good news. The tests are just about being certain.
Tests for this, maybe tests from that Saturday night doctor if things don’t get better. I’m falling apart now that I’ve moved to Brisbane. I’m getting sick of it.
Well, that’s healthy. Don’t stop being sick of it. And I’m sure it’ll be fine. So sleep. I’ll be back later. After lunch. Is there anything you need?
What don’t I need? I’m the complete damsel in distress. I need one of everything, and two or three of some things. Except grapes. Clothes would be good.
That’s a tough one to start with.
You can do it. I’ll write down the sizes. See? See how easily I’m giving in to this? she says, visibly annoyed with herself. And could you phone Bagelos to say I won’t be in?
Yeah. Easy.
Okay, go treat that teething. On to the next patient.
So I hand my gown back, I catch the lift to ground, barefoot and shabby in my T-shirt and shorts, sleep-deprived and rung out. Standing in the lift with a group of white-coated med students who give me lots of space, and are sure I’m a reprobate in from the street overnight to sleep something off. One of plenty of sad stories in this place. I want to tell them, Those people are your patients, too, remember, but I don’t. I’m no authority figure at the moment.
The tinted glass doors of the building open, and I’m hit by the glare of daylight, the streams of people coming in and out, moving purposefully past me, taking care of business. Ambulances dropping people off. Two painters with a ladder, clerks with files. The day is bright and warm already, the bitumen hot under my feet. And if I had to pick one relationship in my whole life to get right at the moment, it’d have to be the Bean. That’s what occurs to me when I get in the cab, show that I can pay, despite my appearance, and we’ve turned round, U-turned to head west, to my parents’ place.
I’m glad that’s over. The night, this morning. I’m glad I told her, and set things straight.
In my whole life I’ve only told two people that I was in love with them. No-one knows that, of course. It’s not one of the stats you necessarily share with your friends.
I told Mel. The first time was in Cambridge. It was winter. We wanted to come home. We were drinking red wine and cooking pasta in the kitchen of our flat and all of a sudden I didn’t care about the cold, the car that wouldn’t start, how early the night came. And I told her I loved her. And what happened to that? Where did it go? What did I actually feel that night? I can’t remember. There’s too much fuzz in my head today. Or else I just can’t remember.
Today. My second time. Ash. In the instant I worked it out, I told her. Maybe I told her even in the instant before I worked it out, and it just came out of me, unreasoned and unstoppable and I heard it at the same time she did. But it sounded right. It wasn’t my plan to tell her. I was going to admit to something, but it wasn’t quite supposed to be that. But it is that, I guess, so out it came.
And this time, there was no anxious wait, no moment of deadly freefall while you wait to hear if you’re loved back. Because she’d already told me she didn’t love me. But I needed her to know anyway. Simply, I think, because it feels true. More than true. Alarming even, that I’m off the rails like this and feeling such a thing, but the best kind of alarming. That I’m suddenly able to feel again. Feeling things I’m not certain I’ve ever felt, and surely I’m too old for that. I should have felt everything by now.
She told me she didn’t love me and then she kissed me anyway, with her mouth and its taste of burnt lino, burnt carpets, thick asphyxiating smoke. A different mouth. It’s been years since I kissed a different mouth. Not far short of ten years. She has different teeth, a different tongue. It’s as though I’ve done something wrong.
; I wasn’t ready to be kissed. I’m still not ready, but I’d do it again right now. There’s a hint of that taste – the smoke – still in my mouth, and the taste of her and I don’t want it to go.
I don’t know what happens next. In a different way from not knowing what would happen when Mel died. Today it’s about life, fresh despair I can’t avoid, but don’t even want to. Ash, Ashley, coughing up the last of the smoke, living. Not loving me. But I’m not afraid now. Not afraid to be loved and even not loved. So whatever barrier I might have put up between me and the world, it’s far from perfect. This is so odd. It’s been years since this stuff’s been around and now, this too-bright morning as we run west against commuter traffic, it’s all I can think about.
Not all. I’m going to the Bean. And I’ve got a lot, having her. I want to see her, I want to wake her, I want to play. I want a few of hours of this day when things are as normal as they could possibly be.
I think I’ll take her to harass the ducks. I want to see her explore today. I want to be there when she sees brand new things. When she chews on dirt, crawls till her knees are green. Gives me one of those looks that wants information, and trusts me to give it to her. I want her to walk and talk. I want her to get to Erikson Six without a single bad day, and I want to be there for her, every bad day she has. Even if it’s today, and even if today is only teething jelly and Panadol and grizzling, and no fun at all.
I want to tell her about life, and how it never works the way you expect it will, but most of the time it’s more good than bad. And I don’t care if that’s the corniest thought I’ve ever had. There’s more. I want to teach her to write her name, to like the music I like and bowl leg spin, and I want to be there if she falls in love with someone who doesn’t love her back. Who gives her only a strong kind of like in return. I want to say to her, if she ever needs it, I know it hurts like you can’t believe, but imagine what it means, that you can feel these things, even if they sometimes turn on you. Imagine how it might be if it worked out. I think I can.
The Bean. I can visualise every last thing about her, every detail. Her mother’s eyes, her mother’s nose. My ears (poor thing). The tiny creases she makes in her hands. They’re all her own. But wherever they came from, these parts are hers now, a combination programmed by the genes put together fifteen months ago and worked on, reshaped, by every day since.
We were desperate that night, Mel and me. Both of us desperate not to give in. After the band’s last set, after we hurried home, it’s desperation I remember as I fought to get the key in the door and wished I’d left the outside light on, wished the storm hadn’t opened up when it did. And there were plenty of days, before and since, when we didn’t feel that desperation, but it must mean something that we did that night, when we were both afraid enough that we didn’t care about being soaked, about the water we trailed through the house, the clothes that we left in wet disarray on the bedroom floor. And the rain thrashed down on the tin roof and we forgot the debris of the past few years and found something better. At least some echo, some recollection, of love.
And that, then, is the bit the Bean will know when the time comes to deal with this. The Bean, still starting in the world and needing a load of looking after between now and any explanations. She’s a very good reason to believe that these are the days. But I should be making them the days anyway, and considering her a bonus.
The cabbie chats, or tries to, but realises he won’t get too far. On the radio, Gene Pitney sings ‘Trans-Canada Highway’.
I decide that, if I’m going to cry, I should make it quick – finish before we get to Toowong – or my parents will wonder what the hell’s going on. They just wouldn’t get that.
And now on with more classic hits of the sixties and seventies, the DJ says, not even stretching his definition of the world as far as the ‘Choose Life’ T-shirt. And some Neil Diamond. Let’s hear that ‘Beautiful Noise’.
Fine, I’m thinking. Wreck a Neil Diamond song for me now. Stitch that onto this morning and see if I care. Thank god I don’t share the cabbie’s taste in radio. How would I get through it if it had been another station, any track from The Best of the Lemonheads?
I call Bagelos on my mobile before I forget, and I tell them Ash is sick and won’t be in for the next couple of days.
And then I call my parents, and I tell them everything’s okay. I ask how Lily is and my mother says, Fine. Slept like a baby. Your father’s gone toy shopping, but she’s still here. She’s looking over this way right now, waving. That’s ‘hello’, I think. So how are you, really? You’ve had quite a night.
Yeah. I’m fine. Actually, I honestly am. I’ll tell you more when I get there. Tell the Bean I’ll be there soon. Tell her we’re going to play with the ducks.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, I’d like to thank Mark Saywell, my laser coach, for both his expertise and his willingness to put up with the unappealing smell of scorched banana, just so that I could have a first-hand understanding of Jon Marshall’s job. I’d also like to thank the Queensland Ambulance Service for confirming details about training and ambulance fit-out. Naturally, any slip-ups when it comes to the technicalities are mine alone.
I’d like to thank Binker for appearing as Elvis, and the stabilising sheet for appearing as itself. Also, Helen, Amy, Bek, Marie-Louise and Gina for their insights into Erikson, science, babies in fiction, and sensitive mothers and their steaming mugs of tea.
And I’d like to thank the crew of people who make the draft versions welcome and help me get the most out of each book – particularly Clare Forster and Rachel Scully at Penguin Australia, Fiona Inglis and Jane Bradish-Ellames at Curtis Brown, and everyone at home.
A note concerning violence to pets: readers can be assured that a highly trained stunt double was hired to play the role of Katie’s cat Flag in chapters seven and fourteen, and that no animals were harmed or put at risk during the concept development, writing, editing and publication of Perfect Skin. Certain scenes in the novel in which Flag’s well-being is inadvertently compromised by actions of the central character, Jon Marshall, should not be seen to indicate the type of behaviour the author and his publisher feel is suitable when interacting with household pets.