“This is cold”, she said when the girl came over, “Yours?” she asked looking at me.
“Mine’s fine.” I said even though it wasn’t.
“Could I have another one?”
The waitress looked at Charis, then looked at me.
“It’s fine really,” I solved the dilemma by downing it in two or three gulps.
“It’s a flat white thanks.” The waitress walked off with the coffee and disappeared behind a green curtain into the kitchen.
“We’re paying for it,” she said simply, “Might as well have it hot, don’t you think?” I can’t remember what I thought, but I walked her back to the shop and bought War and Peace. We were going out by page three hundred.
** *
Mum had been suspicious from day one and had us over for roast dinner and interrogation.
“You eat meat, do you Charis?” asked Mum brandishing a knife and looking for something to carve.
“Yes thanks Mrs McEvoy.”
“Who was that girlfriend of yours Robert who didn’t? What was her name now?”
“Mum!”
“He’s been out with some funny girls,” she said handing Charis her plate.
“I’ve been out with some funny boys,” said Charis evenly, taking the plate more than being handed it. Mum had looked blank for a second as if not believing it, before being saved by the peas and carrots dinging in the microwave.
“Vegetables?” she said in a higher pitch than usual when she came back.
“She speaks her mind a bit too much,” said Mum to me later with no hint of irony. Mum had had the same conversation about the state of young people these days with every girl I’d ever brought home, and to her credit she’d landed every one of them, leaving them flopping and gasping on the beach. Not Charis. She’d risen to the bait alright, but just as Mum was thinking of reeling her in she’d swum back out, wrapped the line around mum’s jetty, before snapping it and swimming off with a flourish of her tail. Mum had waved us off with the hollow look of the angler who has just seen the big one get away.
“She needs to know her place a bit more.”
“I like her, Mum.”
“She’s got a bit to say.”
“And you don’t?”
“She’s sitting at my table with her hands all over you, you’ve only been going out a month or two. Goodness knows what you get up to in private,” she added, with a look like she didn’t want to think about it, but couldn’t get it out of her mind. Charis had sat at mum’s table and her hands had been all over me, and I was surprised and elated at how unembarrassed I had felt.
“It’s not like you walked in on us Mum.”
“Robert!”
“I know what I’m doing Mum.”
“Just don’t let her control you, that’s all.”
“Well you’d know a thing or two about control,” I said with triumph and regret rolled into one.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing Mum, just forget it.” We didn’t speak for a couple of weeks, longer than usual, but she phoned through her truce eventually.
“Can you give me a hand shifting the back room?” she asked.
“But you only shifted it round a while back!”
“I want to shift it again, you can see the marks on the carpet.”
We arranged it for the next week.
“Bring Charis if you like,” she said, “you can stay for dinner.”
“Thanks Mum.”
“I’m sure it won’t be dull,” she said, signing off with some excuse about the chicken burning on the stove before I had a chance to answer.
** *
Charis’s house was an old fibro with a gravel driveway, set well back on the only block in the street not yet subdivided. It had a big Norfolk Island pine out front, old cyclone fencing and a wood-fired hot water system in a little hut on the side.
“Welcome to Maison Sullivan,” she said with a flourish, the first time I went over.
The rest of the street had moved on. There’d been an old market garden across the road once, but it was all new housing now; limestone two storeys with black tiles and air-conditioners. Their lounge was as overgrown as the garden, both with an assortment of cats. Family photos lined the unplayed piano, everyone dressed in their good clothes and standing in front of the same swirly blue background. Charis and her sister smiling from behind braces, dad’s brave comb-over, mum in floral dresses too old for her.
“Yuk,” Charis grimaced, when I looked at them.
“Ours are just as bad,” I said, “Everyone’s are.”
“This is my room, this is my stuff,” she said matter-of-factly, showing me around. It was the only tidy room in the house, eclectic, but with some order. Old pine bookshelves stacked high, throw-rugs on the cast-iron double bed, some Joy Division and Nick Cave posters, and an old cheval mirror, a record player and stack of early eighties albums like The Cure and New Order. She had some tapes, but no CDs that I could see. There was a purply glow due to the cellophane covering the lamp on the chest of drawers. A jarrah cupboard was covered in old promo stickers from radio stations that don’t exist anymore or that have changed their names.
“We got that years ago from people who used to live next door,” she said, “Mum reckons it smells of piss.”
“All old cupboards smell like that.”
“Yeah, that’s true, wonder why. Maybe they sprayed cupboards with eau-de-urine or something when they made them in the seventies.”
“Maybe.”
“What about your cupboard?” she demanded.
“What about it?”
“Does it smell of piss?”
“No, but it’s only a year old.”
“There you go then,” she laughed, “They’ve got new regulations now.”
We spent a lot of time at her house, hanging out listening to music. Charis’s family wasn’t special or anything, but that was okay. I didn’t need special, just safe. They never went on holidays together, or did the stuff we used to as a family. They didn’t even seem to have a lot of friends, though Charis caught up with some old school friends from time to time. She spent a bit of time with Doris and Hector, helping out in the exchange on some of the days she didn’t work. No one seemed to come to their house much and there didn’t seem to be any aunts or uncles. I’d helped her dad at his car repair shop once or twice, just washing and waxing the cars afterwards. He only said stuff when he needed to, asking for the buffer, or a quiet curse when he barked his knuckles putting a fender back on.
Charis’s mum said that Charis knew stuff in a way other people couldn’t. They used to go to a church, Living Waters Pentecostal Fellowship that met in an old Freemasons’ hall. It wasn’t like the churches those people on singing competitions go to where everyone’s beautiful, and stuff happens right on cue, like it’s been rehearsed all week. “How about a big welcome to our special guests from Channel Ten!” the minister would say, and everyone cheers because they’re going to be on TV. No-one rehearsed at Living Waters, God just turned up unannounced. Her mum talked about it a lot.
“When the Spirit came, He came because He decided to, not us,” she’d say. “People used to say he rained down on us, but it was richer than that.”
“How rich Mum?” Charis used to ask, even though she knew the answer.
“Like warm honey pouring over you,” she’d say, “Jars and jars of it.”
I don’t really know why they left; I never really asked. Charis’s mum had hinted that it was something to do with Charis’s gift. “They called her pure as Jesus,” her mum would say, “pure as Jesus.” Sometimes her mum would sit in her chair, her head covered in a blanket, muttering. “Praying in tongues,” Charis explained, “We all used to do that. But not anymore, only Mum.” Her Dad said grace at meals, always in his own words and not with those rhyming graces you sometimes learn as a kid, like he really meant it.
* * *
“Rob’s catching up with his dad,” said Charis, standing
up to yawn and stretch between Scrabble games at Hector and Doris’s, “After ten years.”
“Twelve years, he left when I was fifteen.”
“It’s a long time whatever it is,” she said coming over and putting her chin on my head and wrapping her arms around my neck, and leaning into me hard.
Doris and Hector lived in a house older and messier than Charis’s. It looked like they’d saved themselves the bother and just bought a bric-a-brac shop, taken off the price-tags and moved their books and furniture in. They were in their seventies with the odd arthritic hip and a shared body odour masked by perfume and aftershave. The book exchange didn’t make them any money, but it didn’t lose them any either. They went in the odd day, but were more inclined to sit in their armchairs with a good book, dust and dog-hair, and leave Charis to run the place.
“What about you Charis?” asked Doris all up front, “Are you going to meet him?” Her bulging eyes were made bigger by her thick glasses and skin-tautening grey bun.
“When he’s ready.”
“When Rob’s ready?”
“When his Dad’s ready” said Charis, pulling away and putting the Scrabble tiles back in the bag for the next game, “he might just want to see Rob first.”
“He’ll love you Charis,” said Doris, “How couldn’t he?”
“He loved Rob,” said Charis “Didn’t stop him leaving.”
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad,” offered Hector thoughtfully, leaning back and picking at the grey hair that had withdrawn from the top of his head and had found its way out of his veiny ears.
“Hec!” scolded Doris.
“Philip Larkin, English poet,” he apologised, scouring his nose for more hair. Think it’s called This Be the Verse. Got it somewhere.”
He shuffled off and was back a minute or so later with a thin blue hardback.
“Philip Larkin, 1922 to 1985.”
“Hec,” warned Doris helplessly, as he flicked through the pages.
“Ah, found it. “They fuck you up your mum and dad.” he said deliberately, ignoring Doris’s glare before turning to me, ‘They may not mean to, but they do’,” he went on, snapping the book with a triumphant flourish and sitting back at the Scrabble board and pulling out a tile. “Righto,” he said briskly, “I’m up first, unless anyone’s got better than ‘A’.”
CHAPTER THREE
I liked the way Charis liked my rough hands.
I’d just finished a day with Bevan and was sitting on her porch.
“Mmm, rough,” she said, putting one to her face.
“Bevan reckons they’re smooth.”
“They’re rough to me.” She traced a line around her face with my fingers.
“Hey, you’ll get dust on you!”
“I’ll cope. Besides if you keep working with your brothers I’ll get used to it.”
I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted her to get used to. It had been a tough day.
The job was three weeks over, as all jobs tended to be, and the owners obviously felt they had dispensed with enough money to allow them to dispense with politeness as well. Bevan had been on the phone for half an hour with them, “uh-huhing” and placating them with lies.
“Jeez mate, feather the edges!” Bevan snapped when he’d turned back to me, “It’ll show through the paint and it’ll be my arse they’ll have.”
He grabbed the sander from me and scuffed at the plasterboard, deftly smoothing the flushing.
“Sorry bro,” I’d said, trying to sound tradey. He and Chris gave me casual work with them from time to time when things were tight financially. I appreciated the work, but resented their confident assumptions.
He finished the flush and stood back to admire it.
“You bloody university types and your soft-hands. Wouldn’t survive a week in the real world.”
“I’ve got callouses.”
“You didn’t get ‘em from working though, did ya!” he’d laughed, knocking plaster dust off against the wall. It orbited the room in the late afternoon sun-shafts.
For Bevan and Chris their world was the world. You want credibility with a tradey? Get your hands dirty. At least don’t go on site with new work-boots. That was the thing with tradeys. If they got new boots it was a sign they’d been working hard. If someone like me got them it was proof I didn’t belong.
“Your fancy degree not getting you anywhere?” Bevan had laughed when I’d first asked him for some work.
“Didn’t do it to get me somewhere,” I’d said.
That didn’t make sense to Bevan and Chris and their mates. The point of doing something was to get somewhere. Why do it for its own sake? They’d never fix up a house just to fix it up. That would be extravagant and wasteful. And that’s how they saw me and Stuart. We’d been the first in our family – ever – to break the mould and go to uni. Stuart was doing well, but their theory was holding firm with me.
“I don’t want you to get used to it,” I said to Charis.
“Why not?” she said, putting my hand back on my leg like it was a dead hand, “The money’s ok isn’t it?”
“I didn’t do three years at uni to end up doing this.”
“What did you do three years at uni to end up doing?”
“I don’t know, but not this.”
The screen door opened and Mrs Sullivan walked out with what had now become known as “Rob’s towel.” It was a big beach towel of the Australian flag, but the red bits were pink now and the stars were fading as the blue had washed out over the years.
“You want a shower love?”
“Please Mrs Sullivan.”
“He’s getting workman’s hands Mum,” Charis crowed, holding my hand up again as if it were the FA Cup.
“Nothing wrong with workman’s hands love,” said Mrs Sullivan, “Mr Sullivan’s always had workman’s hands. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“You like Dad’s hands don’t you Mum?”
“Honest hands, workman’s hands,” she said, handing me the towel and going back in. “Staying for dinner?” She yelled over her shoulder.
“Please!” we yelled in unison.
She stuck her head out again. “It’s pork. Good workman’s food!”
* * *
Charis’s mum was right about the shame factor. Cash-in-hand jobs with my brothers wasn’t exactly my dream gig. I lived in dread of meeting someone from my course who had “made it” in the way that I hadn’t. I’d seen a few of my old tavern crew presenting the news, or filing reports.
“I went to uni with him,” I’d said to Bevan when I was round at his place watching the footy with a few of his mates, and a National Nine news break came on.
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Jeez mate, how’d you be? And now you’re sitting here watching the footy with us blokes, and he’s reading the bloody news. What’d you do wrong?” Laughs all round. Beer glasses chinked all round.
The worst moment had been when Bevan took me to quote on a job. The owner turned out to be some city barrister with one of those old inner city terraces with fancy iron railings.
“The staircase needs replacing,” he’d said, with the confidence of a man whose words create ex nihilo. I saw the wedding photo on the piano, the pair of them laughing on the steps of Guildford Grammar School chapel. His wife had been in the year below me. Blonde and brash, always laughing about “getting so wasted last night.”
“My wife’s away on an overseas assignment. If you’re going to take the job, I’d appreciate it if you could finish before the end of the month.”
Sick churned in my stomach for the fours hours up to the time Bevan phoned him back and decided not to take the job on.
“Too much on me plate at the moment,” he’d said as he handed me back the phone. He crunched through the gears on the Hilux for emphasis. “Besides, he was a bit of an arrogant prick, wasn’t he?” Another crunch. “Don’t like doing work for arrogant pricks, they’re more trouble than they’re w
orth.”
** *
It’s always better, if not to shift the blame for stomach churning moments like that, to at least spread the blame around. I’d spent my final years of school too busy coping with Mum and her proud grief to think about my own. Dad had left the week before I started Year 11, turning Mum’s concern for my study into an experiment. Over the next two years she monitored my progress with scientific zeal.
“He’s got a lot to answer for,” she’d say, observing me from the doorway while I finished another last minute essay.
“I haven’t failed yet mum.”
“No, but still,” she said, walking off to take notes. When I failed my mock maths by one percent, there was a triumphant tone to her comfort. “It’s affecting him more than he lets on,” she crowed to her sister on the phone from Belfast. I wasn’t sure what worried her more; the fact I’d failed, or the fact it was only the mocks. In the end I passed everything and duxed English. Mum unravelled at my graduation, giving a loud start when my name was called out and I went up to get my prize. Afterwards I sweated under the halogen lights as the photographer spent five minutes getting her to stop crying so he could take our picture. The other parents stood in line, hovering between impatience and pity.
I staggered into university like a man washed up on a beach. I now had three years to recover and find some direction. Orientation Day was a mix of Garden of Eden and Vanity Fair, and I wandered around the stalls threatened by the sex and confidence. The smell of dope and sausage sizzles, bands blaring in the pub and the shrieking laughter combined to unnerve me.
“What’s this?” said Mum when I got home, holding up the condoms from my O Day show bag.
“Mints,” said Stuart, “I’ll have ’em.” Bevan and Chris giggled, and Mum shot them a glare.
“Well they won’t get used in this house,” she said tartly.
“Not by him anyway,” said Stuart, to yet more laughter.
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