The Whole of My World

by Nicole Hayes

  ‘I thought we were going to stay until the end of the ceremony?’ It seems right, as much as it hurts.

  ‘Do what you like. I’m leaving.’ But she doesn’t leave. She just stands there, waiting.

  ‘I have to check on Mick.’

  She stares at me in disbelief and then those hard eyes turn to stone, as though I’ve let her down, just as she knew I would.

  ‘I’ll meet you at Fernlee Park,’ I say, offering a compromise. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Tara looks away and shrugs. ‘Yeah, whatever.’ I watch her fade into the crowd of Glenthorn fans, escaping the horror of the Warriors’ victory speeches. And that song.

  I needn’t have bothered worrying about Mick. The Glenthorn dressing rooms are closed to visitors. Even the media aren’t allowed in. At the door, Geoff’s face is as stern and bitter as I’ve seen it, and he looks right past me, like he doesn’t know who I am. There’s no way I’m getting in.

  I wait for the train to Fernlee Park and run into a few of the other cheersquad regulars. Red is miraculously silent when she sees me, while Bear and Danny are arguing about what might have happened if only. I don’t hang around to listen. I don’t want to relive it before I have to.

  As I get on the train, I can hear Sharon shrieking all the way down Platform 9, so I hide behind a group of Warriors supporters, keeping my eyes down to avoid any victory taunting.

  At Fernlee Park Station, I see Kimberly and Renee enter the toilets. I decide to change here rather than risk not getting into the social club dressed like I am. The Ladies have already shed their cheerleader costumes and are wearing tight jeans and midriff tops, their make-up thick and their hair brushed out. Although their clothes are similar, the effect is different for each of them. Kimberly looks like a movie star, or a TV star anyway, while Renee would have no trouble finding work on Fitzroy Street.

  ‘Bad luck, hey?’ Renee doesn’t look up from the mirror when I walk in. Her lipstick is smudged near the corner of her mouth and she’s trying to rub it off.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, the pain still hovering somewhere nearby. It hasn’t hit me yet, and though I know it’s coming, I sure as hell am not going to reveal it to these two.

  ‘Should be a few broken hearts at the social club, I reckon,’ Renee continues, turning to look at me. ‘Eddie probably not the least of them.’

  I shrug, wetting a paper towel to wipe my face clean, faking cool. I retreat to the toilet cubicle to change. I don’t even want to look at them, or anyone really, let alone chat.

  ‘Yeah, I reckon Eddie’s the best bet for tonight,’ Renee continues, her voice sailing smoothly over the top of the toilet door.

  Kimberly mutters something I can’t hear, then adds, ‘Not for me. He’s history at the club anyway. Ask anyone.’

  I yank my jeans on hard and pull my T-shirt roughly over my chest, grabbing my bag without looking back. I can barely open the stall door fast enough. ‘You’re just bandwagon supporters!’ I yell, like there isn’t a greater insult. ‘It wasn’t Mick’s fault! We lost by twenty-eight points! Or are you too stupid to understand that?’

  Renee and Kimberly stare at me. ‘What’s up your bum?’ Renee asks.

  ‘Why’s everyone blaming Mick?’ I rage.

  ‘Because he stuffed up,’ Renee answers, shrugging. ‘And we lost. But hey, it’s just a game.’ And she turns back to the mirror, while Kimberly keeps watching me, like there’s something she doesn’t understand but wants to.

  ‘What’s up with you and Eddie? I mean, are you together?’ She’s asking the question like she doesn’t think it’s possible.

  I don’t know if I’m more offended by the question or the fact that she thinks it could never happen. I’m offended by both, I decide. ‘You know he’s married, right? With a wife?’ I say. As if there’s anyone else he’d be married to. ‘We’re just friends,’ I add weakly. ‘I don’t want to hear any more shit about him leaving,’ I say, this time without any hint of uncertainty. ‘He’ll be at Glenthorn until the day he retires. He’s meant to be. It’s his home.’ Then I storm out of the toilet block, only later realising I’ve left my Glenthorn scarf behind.

  But it doesn’t matter. I can’t go back.

  The social club is packed and the queue outside winds all the way down Leafy Crescent. I can’t find Mick or anyone else to sign me in, and Tara hasn’t shown up. I take my place in line, amazed at all the unfamiliar faces that have decided to show up at the club to commiserate our loss. I wonder how many more people would be here if we’d won.

  My head feels thick and heavy and I can’t get past the ache in my ribs, like someone has wedged something hard and sharp in there and left it behind to rot.

  When Tara finally appears, I still haven’t spotted Mick and my head is pounding all the way to my feet. She must have gone home like we’d planned, because her face is free of war paint.

  ‘You’re late,’ I say, not giving her a chance to speak.

  She shoves into the line in front of me, ignoring the other members who tell her to go to the end. She’s drunk and oblivious. Suddenly that seems to be the only way to get through this – for me too.

  ‘Did you bring anything to drink?’ I ask.

  She eyes me warily, then dives into her backpack and hands me an Island Cooler. ‘I’ve got one more each – you can pay me back inside.’

  I open the bottle, taste the sweet bubbly wine and decide that it tastes way better than beer. I take a long swallow, and then another, the cold bubbles burning my dry throat. ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  The line begins to move and I scan the crowd for a familiar face. Mick must already be inside.

  ‘Where are the Ladies?’ Tara asks. We move another step closer to the front door.

  ‘Kim and Renee were at the station,’ I say, not adding that I’d basically told them to get lost. ‘We might need to ask Lisa. Or someone else,’ I add, hoping Tara doesn’t press it. I glance across the street and notice Mick’s car pulling into the car park. I wait for him to cross the road before I call out. ‘Mick!’

  He’s already being mobbed by a sea of brown and gold, most of them kids, some of them telling him off for giving away the penalty, others trying to make him feel better. He doesn’t look up, not for them or for me.

  ‘Mick! Can you help us?’ I race towards him, hoping Tara is sober enough to hold our place in the queue. ‘Can you sign us in?’ I ask, standing between him and the steps to the social club. ‘Mick?’ I ask again, finally getting him to look up. He sees me, I know he does. But he doesn’t stop or answer, he just walks steadily through the milling crowd, towards the social club doors, past the queue, past me, taking the steps in long strides and disappearing inside.

  I stare after him, stunned.

  ‘Shelley!’ I can hear Tara calling me but I can’t move. I don’t want to see the satisfaction on Tara’s face.

  Lisa appears beside me and takes my arm. ‘I’ll get you two in if I can cut in line with you,’ she says, already leading me back to Tara, knowing I’ll say yes.

  I’m still reeling when we approach the bar. The music is loud – probably to drown out our thoughts – and the crowd is drunk and roaring. There is a desperate intensity to it; a nasty edge that makes me nervous. Everyone’s lost in those minutes where it all went wrong. Reliving it, over and over. No concern for tomorrow, or hopefulness about next time. They can’t get past today. No one can. And every angry conversation ends at the point where Mick spoiled O’Reilly’s shot and gave away a goal.

  ‘He might as well have kicked the bloody thing for them himself,’ one drunken voice slurs.

  ‘Fucking has-been.’

  Tara and I drink together for a while, not mentioning the game or talking much about anything. Lisa drifts in and out, forcing her way through the crowd long enough to order a drink beside us, exchange a word or two, then leave. It’s only now that I realise how Bear hovers wherever Lisa is and how obvious it is that he likes her.

  Meanwhile, I’ve moved fr
om Island Coolers to mixed drinks. Tara orders us both a Fluffy Duck and then a Blue Lagoon, and then something with a name I can’t pronounce or remember but is the colour of a burnt-orange sunset. I have two of these. Or three. Then I stop counting.

  Things begin to blur rapidly. The music blares songs I hate and songs I love, all mixing and shifting into something I suspect I’ll never forget, blending with this feeling of anxiety, loss and anger, forever connected to the pain. Time stands still, and then the DJ cuts in and the Glenthorn theme song fills the noisy club. A tired but determined chorus of voices rise, defiant in their refusal to remain quiet and, it seems, stay in tune. Someone shouts out that the players are coming, and the doors to the players’ room open. Everyone’s attention turns towards them as they emerge from the darkened room. They’re drunk already. Or maybe it’s me and not them. Either way, I can’t see Mick and no one’s asking where he is.

  Some of the players mingle with the crowd, offering apologies and accepting condolences, while others hang back, mute and sullen. Everyone looks lost and angry. But also profoundly hurt.

  ‘I need air,’ Tara rasps in my ear.

  I’m about to follow her out to make sure she’s okay, but then I see Mick and my feet are riveted to the spot. The doors to the players’ room have been propped open and, through the gloomy light, I can see him leaning against the bar, standing alone, ignoring every offer by the other players for company and consolation.

  I hesitate. Tara is already lost in the crowd. I almost follow her as I know I should, but then Mick looks at me – right at me – and there’s nowhere else for me to go but to him.

  The bouncer stops me at the door. ‘You need an invitation,’ he says, but he isn’t rough or rude. He seems almost apologetic.

  I smile and nod, turning away to look for Tara.

  ‘Let her in.’ I look back to see Mick talking to the bouncer, who nods and lets me through.

  I’m nervous. I want to tell Mick I know what everyone is saying but that he shouldn’t listen, it isn’t true and that the pain will stop soon enough. Or not stop exactly, but shift and change, become something less powerful, something blunter and more even. More predictable. That’s what I want to say, but I can tell he’s in no mood to listen. So I go with the old favourite. ‘I’m sorry, Mick,’ I say, wishing there were other words, an alternative to ‘sorry’ that actually means something.

  ‘About what, Shell?’ He sounds tired, like he isn’t really listening. He studies his drink – something murky brown.

  ‘It’s not your fault, you know.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

  ‘Well, they’re right. No one’s blaming you,’ I lie, convinced that after the pain has faded and more time has passed, the memory of Mick’s mistake will fade and people will realise it’s about the team, not just Mick. In the end, it’s always about the team. ‘It’ll get better.’ At least this much I know.

  He turns on me then, his face so angry that, for a split second and for only the second time in my life, I feel physically threatened. ‘You might think you know everything, Shell, but you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t mean –’

  ‘What? You don’t mean what?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know what I mean.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. You’re just a kid who thinks she knows everything. But you don’t. Not about this, anyway. You know full well that even if they’re not saying it to me, they’re saying it to themselves – to the world. And they’re right. Of course it’s my fault. It’s entirely my fault. And that’s why I’m standing here on my own and why I won’t be back next year. Not here, anyway.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m talking to other clubs. If they’ll have me.’

  ‘You can’t leave Glenthorn! It’s too early to worry about this stuff. It’s just happened. It’s still new. Don’t think about next year yet. It’s too early.’

  ‘Actually, it’s too late. I’ve made up my mind. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘How can you leave?’ The idea is so ridiculous to me, so unnatural. This is where he belongs. Where we all belong. This is . . . home. Doesn’t he know that? ‘They won’t let you go,’ I add, desperate to believe it.

  ‘You’re kidding, right? What do you think will happen? We’ll all shake hands and put our heads down again for next year? Shrug it off and move on like nothing’s happened? We lost! That’s why we play – to win. And if we don’t win, we’ve failed. It’s that simple. Black and white. Probably the only thing in life that is.’ He looks at me closely, like he’s measuring me. ‘I mean, that’s why people love it. It’s so easy to divide the game into good and bad. Win or lose. Right? Well, we lost. We lost the only sure thing we’ve known. We have to pay for that. Someone has to pay for that. And I’m putting up my hand before someone else does it for me.’

  His eyes are so red I can hardly see his pupils. The lights are bright and flashing. The room keeps turning like we’re in a whirlpool. I can’t feel my feet and my blood is sludge in my veins. I’m so upset I can’t speak. I don’t know what I’d say anyway.

  He looks at me, half disbelieving, half guilty. ‘Did you really think nothing would change?’

  I try to shake my head, no. No. Things always change. All the time. Especially the good things – things that make me happy. I learnt that two years ago. But I can’t say it out loud. That will make it so completely true and irreversible that I wouldn’t know how to wake up tomorrow. ‘What about me?’ I say instead, my voice small and weak.

  Mick gapes. ‘You? What about you? This isn’t your life. It’s my life. For you, it’s a game. For me, it’s what I do. It’s everything.’

  ‘It’s my life too,’ I whisper.

  ‘Your life?’ Mick holds out his hands before me in a kind of surrender. ‘Your life hasn’t even started yet.’

  No. I guess it hasn’t. Or it did start and then it stopped. But he doesn’t know this. Not any of it. This is the moment I should tell him. This is the right place to say that my mother and twin brother were killed in a car accident. That I was meant to be in the car with them – we all were – but I’d cracked it with Dad, in front of Mrs McGuire. It was right before Angus’s game, a twilight tournament that I’d normally play. Dad had just told me he wouldn’t support Jacko’s appeal against the tribunal. That I was to be done with footy, full stop.

  It was our thirteenth birthday, which was supposed to be a celebration, but for me it was the beginning of the end. It wasn’t planned like that, I knew even as I ranted at Dad, but I didn’t care about anything right then. The humiliation, the frustration. They kept telling me I was different suddenly when I felt exactly the same inside. Like my body was weaker somehow, less than it was, all because I was becoming a woman. But I had to keep going – forced to watch Angus’s games because that’s what families do.

  I remember Mrs McGuire’s face, the gentle understanding, the kindness and the concern. I hate that she’d heard me that day. ‘Why did I have to be a twin?’ I’d screamed at Dad, Mum safely tucked away in the canteen, taking her turn on duty. The only witnesses were Dad and Mrs McGuire. And Angus, of course. Angus, who bore the brunt of it because he didn’t want me to play. Josh had stuck up for me, but Angus never did. I wouldn’t have to be there if I wasn’t a twin, I’d reasoned. So it was Angus’s fault I was hurting. I blamed it all on Angus. ‘I wish you never existed!’ I’d screamed at him in the seconds before I stormed off. ‘I wish you were dead!’

  And then I ran, until my lungs hammered in my chest and my legs were mush. Dad had left Angus’s game to come after me, catching up to me when I finally slowed down. We didn’t speak the whole way home. It’s the closest I think I’ve ever felt with him. He knew what I needed and truly understood.

  And when we got home we talked. And I cried. And he said he’d see what he could do, but that rules were rules and there was usually a good reason for them. He didn’t ask if I’d go back to catch the end of Angus’s game. He just stayed
with me until I was okay.

  It was the only Raiders match he ever missed. I think about that a lot.

  When the game should have ended, Dad and I waited for Mum and Angus to come home.

  And waited.

  The eerie twilight descended and Dad shifted from quiet patience to concern. We headed back to the ground, on foot again, walking faster this time. We didn’t get very far. We stopped when we saw the car, or what was left of it, crumpled around a light pole, a truck twisted on its side a little further ahead. Ambulances, police cars, chaos. They tried to divert us, to turn us around, until Dad said the words that changed our lives forever. The words that marked the beginning of the end. ‘That’s my family.’ His voice was flat and dead, the life seeming to have leaked from him the same way it was leaking from my brother. My mother was already gone by then.

  This is what I should tell Mick, and yet I don’t. ‘It is my life,’ I say quietly, beginning to cry. Silently at first, and then not so silently.

  Mick looks confused and ashamed. ‘Pull yourself together, Shell,’ he says.

  I can’t, though. There’s no more of me left. Even the bits that remain are too small and insubstantial to matter. I’m just this mess of odds and ends, bits and pieces with no shape, no form. No glue.

  I don’t know how long he lets me cry before he takes me roughly in his arms, pressing me against his chest, telling me it’ll be okay. That all of it will be okay. He’s talking like a stranger, like someone who doesn’t know me. I have the sudden, scary feeling that if I ever see him again it will be on the TV or in the papers, watching his life go on with another club, with other people, watching it from a distance just like everyone else.

  I stop crying and push him away. ‘You have no idea,’ I say, and leave him standing by the bar. I push the doors to the players’ room open with an awkward bang, knowing that once they’re shut I won’t be able to go back in. And I don’t care.

  The temperature has dropped when I step outside. Forty or fifty fans have gathered on the footpath and the road outside, still dressed in their footy colours, most of them adults and teenagers, most of them drunk or drinking. The strains of the Glenthorn theme song are wobbly but persistent, punctuated by tired choruses of ‘Carn the Falcons!’ and ‘Next year, fellas!’ aimed at the sky.