by Toni Jordan
When Cheryl sees us together, her smile fades. ‘Seamus? Company today?’
Hi Cheryl. It’s me, Grace. I come here every day. Remember?
‘Good morning Cheryl.’ Seamus says. ‘Special occasion.’ He gives me a sideways grin.
Cheryl squishes her face up like a piglet, pulls her notepad from her apron and waits.
‘Grace?’ Seamus says.
Breakfast. He wants me to order breakfast. The first thing on the menu under Breakfasts is fresh fruit with yoghurt. But the first thing alphabetically is bacon and eggs on toast. There are more headings, too: sides, coffee, tea, juices, smoothies. I should have a coffee: the first thing under coffee is espresso. But then I should have the first thing under breakfasts, and the first side. But ordering fresh fruit with yoghurt with bacon on the side sounds a wee bit stupid. Alphabetically, the first thing on the entire menu is apple juice. Perhaps I should have that.
They’re waiting.
‘You go.’
‘Berry and banana pancakes with maple syrup, thanks Cheryl.
And a cappuccino.’
He’s got to be kidding. Who eats that much sugar at this time of the morning? Does he know what that would do to his insulin levels? Those calories would feed a medium-sized African village for a week.
They’re still waiting.
I glance at Seamus, then back at the menu. ‘I’ll have the same.’
Cheryl writes, scowls and heads for the kitchen.
We’re quiet for a moment. It is a comfortable silence, like we are both wondering if this will be the first of many breakfasts.
Still, there are things I have to know.
‘So. Do you live around here?’
‘Nope. Carnegie. I share a house with two of my brothers.’
The coffees arrive. His perfect long fingers curl around his cup. The cup is nestled in his right hand, resting against the fleshy pad of his palm like he’s holding a wine glass full of 1955 Grange. His left hand is over the top of his right, the fingers touching. I would give anything to measure those fingers right now, but I have no ruler or tape and besides I don’t think it would look cool. Seamus sips happily, but I loathe coffee. To drink it I add 5 sugars. Together with the pancakes I should be in a diabetic coma by noon.
‘What’s that like, sharing with your brothers?’
‘Shocking. They’re animals. It’s a temporary arrangement. One just broke up with his wife. The other is saving to go overseas. Soon I’ll be rid of them. I love them, but God, this is too much.’
The pancakes come, too fast. As I suspected: pre-made and heated in the microwave. A heart attack on a plate. Seamus eats like a starving man.
‘Two brothers. No sisters?’
He raises his eyebrows. His mouth is full of pancake. He holds up four fingers and keeps chewing. ‘Three brothers,’ he says, ‘one sister.’
‘Five of you? Wow. Pretty rare these days.’ I imagine five children playing hide and seek in an overgrown backyard. Climbing trees together. Backyard cricket, until one ball smashes the kitchen window and no one owns up. Running through the sprinkler in their underwear. Mum with a pitcher of cold orange cordial and five plastic cups. Dad, teaching each one how to ride a bike. I take a bite. The maple syrup is imitation.
‘Irish Catholics, remember? Either that, or the fact that my parents didn’t own a TV until 1978. The old man thought it was a fad. “I’m telling you woman, they’ll be stopping making these in twelve months, maybe less.”’ He drains the last of his coffee then wipes the foam off his lip with his knuckle. ‘The day my mother made him buy one was the saddest day of his life.’
‘What number were you?’ I lean forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on my hands.
‘I am the second son. My brother Declan is the oldest. Then Dermot, Brian and Kylie. She’s…a little slow. She still lives at home with Mum and Dad.’ He waves his empty cup in the air at Cheryl.
The café is starting to fill; smartly dressed women in designer jeans and peasant tops and beaded sandals. I don’t care; I am following the plan and all those shrivelled-up suburban women could only dream of having the night I had last night.
‘So, Declan, Seamus, Dermot, Brian…and Kylie?’
He shrugs. ‘We were here by then. They wanted to fit in.’
‘Were you close together? In age, I mean.’
His eyes narrow like he’s trying to see something a long way away. ‘Close in both ways. Mum had five under six, in a new country with no relatives, no friends and an accent that made her impossible to understand. Dad did his best, but he worked long hours and looking after children wasn’t a man thing back then. And Kyles needed a bit of extra attention.’
The five of them as toddlers, freshly bathed and wearing their jammies, sitting on the couch. Cuddled together smelling of baby powder and watching Disney on a Sunday night. Not like us, Jill and me. Two. Only two. Each of us in our own room, me reading and Jill playing with dolls.
‘Do you remember Ireland?’
‘Not a thing. You’d think I would; I was four when we moved here. I went back in my early twenties expecting some kind of revelation. I guess you always romanticise, think what your alternative life would have been. I might as well have gone to Mars. It was fun but I felt no connection whatsoever.’
‘Possibly a bit late to ask this, but…single?’
He laughs. ‘Single, yes. Definitely single.’
I wait.
‘I was in a…relationship. We broke up last year.’
‘Why?’
He laughs again. ‘“Why?” Jeez, Grace, don’t hold back. If you want to know something, just come right out and ask.’
I wait.
‘Look…I like my life. I like my job, I like my house. I like going to the football and having friends around for a barbeque. On Sundays I go surfing with some mates. Ashleigh…she was into personal development courses and goal-setting and self-help books…She’s going out with a property developer now. I hear they just bought a block of flats and a Subway franchise.’
I scan his hazel eyes; they remain unclouded. No frown. The mouth does not purse, the way some do when discussing their exes.
‘Date of birth?’ His second coffee arrives. Cheryl takes my cappuccino away without asking. It is half drunk and cold, congealing on top.
‘Into horoscopes, are you?’ He scoops a piece of pancake on his fork using his knife, then a blueberry, then dips it in the maple-coloured goo. He pops the little tower in his mouth. He doesn’t bolt it down like some men. He chews and tastes. I’ve managed about 35 per cent of 1 pancake. I’m still not hungry.
‘Let’s say I have an interest in numerology.’
‘Fifth of January.’ He wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin, despite there being no food there.
Capricorn. He doesn’t seem like an egomaniac. In my experience, Capricorns think they’re Jesus Christ. Or else Jesus Christ thought he was the son of God because he was a Capricorn.
‘1969, right?’
His fork freezes midway to his mouth. ‘How did you know that?’
Note to self: do not let new boyfriend think you are a stalker. I smile in a way I hope looks non-threatening. ‘You told me last week in the café that you were 38. Remember?’
‘Aah.’ Fork continues to mouth.
‘What was your home address when you were little?’
‘The house in Ireland I don’t remember. I was four when we left. Here, it was 23 Carpenter Street, Vermont South.’
Vermont South. I don’t go that far on my holidays. I’ll have to look it up.
At home in the bottom drawer of my bedside table I have a book that was a gift from my mother. It is a notebook with thin translucent pages and faint sky-blue lines. The cover is also blue, a heavy cloth that feels more like upholstery; a kind of a corduroy, but with small, fine ridges. I always remember numbers, but I rarely store them. But now I take out that book and write in it a list of numbers. Seamus numbers. I already have his phon
e number. I still need his current address, but I have 38, 5, 1, 1969, 4, 23. These I will begin with. Others, like the length of his index and ring fingers, and the number of ex-girlfriends, I will collect later.
‘We came out for breakfast to talk about you and I’ve done all the talking. What was it you wanted to tell me?’ He speaks like a man trying to coax a cat from a tree.
I look down at my plate. My breakfast is not muesli, low-fat yogurt and banana. My pancake is not surgically dissected into a predetermined number of bites. I am at the café and it’s not 10.48 a.m.
‘Nothing.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
I was thinking about numbers, of course, but also about those fingers, about where they could go and where I’d like them to go. And I’m thinking about all the clever women who choose men with long fingers.
‘Egomaniac.’ I say. He blushes.
After breakfast, we walk back to the supermarket where he left his car. Old white Commodore. Licence plate MDS 938. He kisses me, standing in the middle of the street. His kiss is less demanding than last night but more enticing. His stubble burns across my cheek. He gives me all his numbers and writes mine down on a tram ticket. I am listening hard, but he doesn’t say ‘I’ll call you.’
9
Now it’s Sunday night. 8.00 p.m.
‘Hello Mother.’
‘Hello dear. Have you had a nice week?’
‘Dandy.’ Sex with a spunky Irishman on the kitchen floor.
‘How’s Mr Parker’s rash?’
‘Better, better. I read this horrible thing in the paper yesterday.’
‘Yes?’
‘About these two boys, twins I think they were, five or six maybe and anyway they didn’t have a pet and they decided between themselves that they would play a game, that one would play at being the dog and the other would take the dog for a walk. So one of them, I can’t remember which one, went into their parents’ room and got this old belt of their father’s and before you know it he put it round his neck like a dog’s collar and lead, you get it? Well you can imagine—choked his poor wee self, they couldn’t get the belt off. It strangulated him. Horrible things they put in the paper these days, no regard for the feelings of the family. Makes me not want to read it anymore. What else do you think I could use for mulch, besides newspapers? Grace? Grace, are you still there?’
Still here. ‘Beats me. Junk mail? Magazines? Mr Parker?’
‘That’s funny, dear. No, I’m sure the colour of the ink wouldn’t be good for the soil. Perhaps I’ll keep buying the newspaper but not read it.’
Then, 19 minutes later: ‘Hello Gracie.’
‘Jill.’
‘Listen, I just wanted to let you know…I am going to China with Harry. The kids will be all right. Do you think the kids will be all right?’
‘They’ll be fine.’
‘They’re each staying at a friend’s place. So they’ll go to school just like normal. And they’re very mature for their age. So they’ll be all right. And it’s only for a week.’
Yes Jill. Everyone will be all right.
‘And Mum will be okay. Do you think Mum will be okay?’
No, Jill. I think flesh-eating aliens will land in your swimming pool and devour the lot of them. I tell Jill I have to go. Can’t talk. Busy thinking.
On Monday it’s raining and 12 degrees. Unseasonable rain and unseasonable cold. I love Melbourne, but Jesus. It’s the middle of summer and it’s pelting down, each drop hard like ice. Hundreds and thousands of drops. Millions. Trillions. It throws me, the rain. It makes my breakfast seem stodgy and chilling to my bones. Breakfast is always 40.00 grams of untoasted muesli (the amount of fat in the toasted kind is unbelievable), 200.00 grams of low-fat yogurt (rotated from the left of the supermarket chilled cabinet and bought only in 5 sets of 2s—not the six-packs, of course) and 1 banana, sliced into 10 chunks.
The rain makes me wish for toast soldiers dipped in boiled eggs.
Last year I bought a laboratory-grade scale. It’s almost impossible to measure muesli to 2 decimal places. It’s almost inhuman to eat the same food everyday without variation. It’s almost impossible to count your steps accurately in the rain because of an irresistible urge to avoid puddles.
I’m sick of this.
On Monday I didn’t want to eat my breakfast. I nearly didn’t go to the café, in favour of staying home in front of the heater. Then I didn’t feel like orange cake. The icing was drooping down the sides like it’d been sitting there all weekend. I had to force it down. 15 pieces. I didn’t even touch the hot chocolate. When I got home I watched some old movie with Greer Garson on TV and did 10 sit-ups in one ad-break then 10 squats in the next. I didn’t feel like dinner either. The chopping and slicing seemed boring and pointless instead of rhythmic and calming. And chicken. Oh God I’m so tired of chicken. I want to eat vegetable lasagne, puffed and browned and cheesy. I want to eat baked salmon sprinkled with lemon rind and capers and maybe a little dill, and potato gratin. Steak and kidney pie with a towering pastry crust 10 centimetres high that shatters against my fork. I want chilli con carne with a hint of cumin that lingers, and tacos and bread and butter pudding and watermelon. Not together. Separately. I have eaten muesli, yoghurt, banana, tuna and egg salad sandwich (alternating) and chicken and vegetables, every single day since I stopped working. The same food for 24 months.
Monday night. No call.
On Tuesday the rain dips to showers. 18 degrees. I clean between the keys of my computer with a cotton bud dipped in tea tree oil, then call Larry. She’s at a friend’s house, Jill says. Jill reminds me, again, that she is going to China. Jill does not ask if she can give the school my number as an emergency contact. Jill does not ask me to phone the kids to see how they are, or drop in on mother or water the pot-plants.
Tuesday night. No call.
I could ring him, you know. It’s not the bloody 1950s. I’m not one of those game-playing women; I just can’t decide when to call. Sunday night was obviously too soon. Monday night seemed a bit perfunctory, and Tuesday seemed like I had deliberately chosen Tuesday instead of Monday so as not to seem too keen. Then when he hadn’t rung by Tuesday night I couldn’t help wondering why. Perhaps he hated it. Perhaps I’m shocking in bed—too whorish. Not whorish enough? Sex too soon? Legs too hairy? Perhaps it’s because we didn’t have sex again in the morning. Perhaps that turned him off. Or perhaps he’s one of those men that want the conquest, just once. Or perhaps he thinks I’m like that.
Wednesday. I rearrange my bookshelf, dissolving my alphabetical arrangement in favour of categories. Biographies first, then fiction then history then mathematics then medicine. Science last. Outside it’s fine. 32. I clean the venetian blinds with hot soapy water and a sponge. 10 wipes on each blade. Wednesday night. No call. Thursday I scrub my skin with a loofah, 10 strokes each half limb. I exfoliate my face. 7 wrinkles around my left eye, 8 around my right. Not so long ago there were 6 around each. Would it be too much to ask for a little symmetry? The little bastards are breeding. Unlike me.
Perhaps I should do another proper spring clean, like my mother used to do. Although I’ve just done this; I spring clean twice a year, on the first of January for the new year and the first of September for the beginning of spring. Obviously it would be better if these two days were 6 months apart, but that can’t be helped.
Despite the fact that I clean very differently from my mother— consciously so—there is something about my actions that reminds me of her. When I clean the house, every inch from the top of the picture rails to underneath the doors, I can close my eyes and be nine years old. It was unbearably cold, as was every day in my memory’s childhood, and my mother was filling the incinerator and the warmth radiated in every direction. The smoke blew around the backyard like acid splashed in your face, towards the sheets waving on the clothesline and I knew that when she took them down they would smell like smoke instead of air and she would wash them again. Yet she didn’t
move them or wait until the burning was over before hanging them on the line. Small bits of paper—fragments of colouring books, pieces of butcher paper—and even threads from clothing blew around the mango tree in an eddy. I poked in the ashes with a stick to find discoloured lumps of plastic and charred metal, pieces of GI Joe dolls and a train set.
Inside the house everything changed from a solid to a liquid. Instead of being in its place and dry, everything—furniture, cushions, curtains—flowed from room to room and place to place as she scrubbed floors and let them dry, and everything was wet. She had Jill and me pull sheets and old medicines and jumpers and the plastic Christmas tree out of cupboards. Even the tiny space where we kept the linen napkins we never used was cleared; my thin arm would snake into every corner where Jill’s chubbier one couldn’t reach. All the sheets and blankets were washed and hung, dripping and heavy, on the line. Bathroom cabinets were emptied, each tube and box checked. Kitchen drawers were upturned, washed and fitted with fresh paper. All the Tupperware was soaked and scrubbed and sunned. Armed with a bucket and sponge, Jill and I scoured the fly screens that my mother had removed from the high windows while teetering on the kitchen stool. She used the same stool to wash the light fittings, slopping soapy water as she went.
This went on from dawn and all day we ate only apples since they needed neither cutlery nor plates. Eventually, late into the night, naked since all our clothes were still drying, Mother would mop the floor starting from the farthest corner and ending at her bed, into which we three would collapse and sleep without sheets or pillowslips. My father had some precognition of Mother’s cleaning spells, like a farm animal sensing the coming of a storm. The day before she began, his car would fill with his fishing gear and a tent. If I’d been asked at the time I would have said he’d gone camping with friends. Now I’m equally sure he went alone.
Even as a child I guessed there was something my mother was desperate to wash away, something that needed to be burned or rinsed or scrubbed at any cost. She was blind to the fact that nothing needed cleaning because these attacks were so frequent, yet there was order and safe structure in her work. That energy is gone now from my mother and all that remains is the way she speaks continuously without breathing or thinking. As a child I would sit up at night to make her gifts—a photo frame edged with sea shells, a fired coffee mug I bought blank then painted. Once I embroidered mother on a pillow case in cursive pink script. I made these things to see the care on her face when she polished or laundered them.