Rose by Any Other Name

by Maureen McCarthy

  I swim. I swim. I swim. Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke. Not out far, but across the beach, amongst all the people. Safe and easy. I keep on swimming. I dip under and open my eyes in the green gloom. Who would have thought it could be this easy?

  It’s not as though I’ve forgotten anything. The memories wash in and out with each wave. But just as one covers me and I feel myself sinking, it draws away and is replaced by other images, conversations; feelings jostle for position in my head. But it’s okay now. It’s all okay. I’m in the water.

  Last Summer, Childers

  Zoe and I had been in the water for over three hours already that morning. The waves were choppy and unpredictable but it didn’t stop us both having the best time. By the time we got out we were exhausted and hungry.

  It isn’t till we’ve climbed the steep steps up from the beach and begun the walk to the secluded car park that I decide.

  ‘Just one more,’ I say, stopping suddenly, turning back to the beach. Zoe looks at me strangely, even though it’s something that is understood between us. Every once in a while one of us isn’t quite ready to leave the beach. It’s easy enough to get out if you’re tired. You pull off your wetsuit, take a swig of water, pick up your board and start for home. Then, suddenly, it doesn’t seem right. All wrong, in fact. You think, This is too good to leave. Like leaving half of the most delicious piece of cake you’ve ever tasted lying on your plate, for no better reason than it is polite to do so. Just one more, you say. One more bite at perfection.

  But this day she looks at me and frowns, because three hours without a break is a long time and the surf is by no means perfect and I’ve already admitted to being hungry. More importantly, she knows something is going on. Zoe is extremely sensitive. She can smell the slightest whiff of discord in any situation and often picks up stray notes of fear or discontent in my voice before I know they are there myself.

  ‘Just half an hour,’ I add. ‘Your dad won’t mind.’ Her father had dropped us off earlier that morning on the way to see a friend and agreed to pick us up after three hours. The time is up but we both know he might not be there yet. And even if he is, Ray is not the sort of guy who’d stress about half an hour either way.

  ‘Okay,’ she says carefully. ‘See you at the car park, then.’

  There is no way I can tell her what’s on my mind so I’m putting off the moment when I have to lie.

  Nothing’s wrong Zoe. You’re imagining it. Everything is cool.

  So there I am, paddling out into the distant blue on a clear and perfect day, surrounded only by sea and sky, and on either side by massive jagged outcrops of red and ochre rock. Childers Cove is incredibly beautiful and isolated. There had been a couple of other surfers there earlier in the day but now I’m in the water alone, and that’s the way I want it. I’ve got things to work out.

  I’m trying to loosen up. Asking the universe for answers. And I swear at that point, the ocean, clear as green glass beneath me, is listening and whispering back advice. Solutions are coming thick and fast, and not before time. The whole thing has become completely impossible. I know that much. There is a way out, the waves are telling me, a way out where no one need get hurt . . . because no one need know. Ever. It can be buried in the bottom drawer along with a few other incidents that I never plan to think about again. I can wrap it up in an old sock, and stow it, and as the years go by it will become brittle and dry and absolutely lifeless, like a sprig of flower placed in the middle of a heavy book. Some pretty thing that took my eye one day when I was in the bloom of youth, and I was open to every stray, stupid thing. Something I plucked and smelled, held and enjoyed, before putting it away to keep as a memento. It can become a weird little anecdote in an otherwise blameless and successful life. Yes. I can lock it up in a box and push the whole thing away.

  Such relief. Until I feel the rip pulling me out. An undertow, as fast and terrifying as a dozen wild horses, dragging me relentlessly straight towards a nest of sharp, inaccessible rocks to the left. And I am suddenly helpless against it, this mighty mysterious force under the water. It’s happening so quickly that my thoughts collapse in on themselves before they have a chance to register. One thing I do know is that Zoe will probably be sitting in the car with her father now, talking and listening to music and waiting for me. There is no view of the beach from that car park. It is a good half-kilometre away, nestled between dunes and scrub.

  No one will know. My breath gets lost in my chest. The universe has turned on me. I’m going to be punished.

  I have a few moments of absolute panic. I will get bashed against the stones. Be cut open and crushed to a pulp. Blood will ooze from my battered limbs and before anyone even knows I’m missing, the sharks will smell my blood. It will bring them in to feed and they won’t wait for the niceties of death, either. No body, even. No funeral. Oh shit. I’d deliberately walked back to this place to surf alone without her or her father or anyone else watching me. Entering the water again, the surf had seemed okay. A little choppier than it had been all morning with Zoe, but more or less the same. Safe enough.

  I’m being pulled very quickly towards the rocks. But now I’ve stopped panicking. That’s the trick. Don’t fight it. Save your energy. Lie on the board, hang on and take it easy. Go with it. With a bit of luck I’ll be taken out way past the rocks. Everything is going to be okay. Haven’t I been lucky in my life already? I’m the girl with the perfect score. Why should all the blessings cut out now? Why shouldn’t my luck hold? Haven’t I just decided to take hold of my life again and do the right thing? The swell gets heavier, more wild and brutal as I am dragged out towards the rocks. I can handle it, I tell myself. I’ve been in some rough water before. What about that time at Portsea when it took me nearly an hour to get in? Then I . . . lose my board.

  I lose my board.

  But how? How does it happen? How can it happen? I fitted the velcro strap securely to my ankle, didn’t I? I did. I did. For a second there, as I watch my board dance off like a kite in the wind, taking away with it my chance to live, I am outraged, livid with fury. This isn’t fair. I carefully fitted that thing around my ankle! I’m not stupid. I remember doing it. I can feel that strap still there so . . . it must have been the other end that came loose. That’s the last coherent thought I have.

  After that I stop thinking. A mammoth wall of water catches me by surprise and without my board I am picked up like a piece of seaweed and thrown headlong into the deep curve of the wave. It brings me right to the top and then spins me around and I tumble, down down down again. Crash. I’m just a small doll in this roiling mass of water. I’m caught, like a piece of undigested food, just a speck in a gush of vomit. As soon as I catch my breath, it is on me all over again. On and on it goes. For how long? I don’t know. It seems like forever. I haven’t even the energy to wave for help now. Only a matter of time, because I’m vomiting in between fresh intakes of sea water. I can’t see. My eyes are stinging, sightless holes in my head. My arms flail about. I splutter, cough and cry all at the same time. So this is it. This is the way my life will end.

  Then I feel something grabbing me, first my arm and then something thick and black and alive around my middle, lifting me up and out of the water. I kick out instinctively, like a frantic insect caught in a web, until I hear the voice in my ear, the wonderful, low, resonating voice shouting above the din right into my ear.

  ‘Stop fighting, Rose. It’s me. Stop fighting!’ The thing around my middle is an arm. The hard thing knocking my shoulder is a board. The roughness grazing my cheek is a two-day beard. Tightly. He is holding me tightly and lifting me onto the board. He has come out to save me.

  I wish I could remember what that felt like. Being saved, I mean. I wish I could remember the elation of being slowly pulled ashore, knowing that my life had been spared.

  Apparently it took over twenty minutes to get me in, and by that stage he was wrecked too. We both were. But I didn’t find out about all that until much later.
I was only semi-conscious, half drowned and delirious. The last thing I remember is the sky. I saw the blue, and I remember seeing it slowly fade to black. I can remember wondering about it. Why was the night coming on so quickly in the middle of the day?

  Road Trip

  Last summer fades away as I stumble through the shallows towards the flags. My whole body is buzzing with a fresh, very cool sense of having done something important. I did it. I went in for a swim. I look around vaguely for Mum. She loves the water, too. I can’t imagine her sitting it out on such a hot day. She’s probably somewhere nearby, lying in the shallows, tanning her legs. But although I take a good look around before leaving the water, I can’t spot her.

  She isn’t waiting by the van either, so I figure I might use the opportunity to head for the shower block. It will be much nicer doing the rest of the trip without salt all over my skin and sand in my bum and between my toes. I unlock the van, climb into the back and search through my things for soap and a bit of moisturizer. Ah! At the bottom of the bag, my mobile phone. I have a few messages so I play them back. First one is from Dot, sounding anxious. Gran isn’t doing too well. Could I ring back to tell her when, roughly, we might arrive? Then one from Elaine, Zoe’s mother, that puts me in a cold sweat.

  ‘Rose, it’s Elaine here. Could you ring me back please?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Elaine,’ I whisper. How does that . . . ugly, dumb witch of a woman know my number? That whining voice sends dread pulsating through my limbs for moments after the message finishes. But what if Zoe is . . . She might have taken a turn for the worse. What if she’s I play the message again and sit very still, trying to imagine that scenario. Then I play it again. Some gut instinct tells me Elaine is not ringing me with news. She wouldn’t. Not me. She is ringing because she wants something, and she wants to make me feel bad in the process . . . all over again. Well, tough, Elaine! I’m not going to walk into that trap again. I erase the message.

  When I get back from this trip I’m going to get rid of this phone. I’ll drop it into that pile of mouldering rubbish in the backyard of the Hurstbridge house. I hardly use it anyway. I don’t have any friends any more, and I hate the fact that someone like Zoe’s mother can reach me! Not to mention my own family. I don’t want to be available to anyone. Full stop.

  The last message is from Roger the Dodger asking me to call back urgently. I don’t, of course. Everything should have been done yesterday with Roger. He’s a complete panic merchant who runs on adrenalin. Once you know that about him, he’s easy enough to handle.

  So I have my shower and I rub the moisturiser into my shoulders and hope I’m not too burned. Still elated about the swim, I rub myself dry, staring into the mirror. I’m looking a bit better somehow. The hair is growing back a bit. I risk a small smile, then go wider. I’m okay. Not ugly. Not beautiful. My eyes are nice. In spite of the Mum factor, this trip is turning out okay. Hey! I’ve had a swim already. I smile again into the mirror. My teeth are good – straight and white – and the rest of me isn’t that bad either. If I’m not dying of sunburn, and if there are waves, maybe I will go surfing at Port Fairy! Who knows?

  Back at the van, I’m irritated to find that Mum hasn’t returned. Half an hour late now and still no sign of her. I pull out the book I’ve been trying to read for a few weeks and lie out on the grass next to the van. The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. I can’t seem to get very far into it and yet I don’t want to give up on it either. I stay with it for ten minutes but can’t concentrate, so I get out my MP3 player and play Radiohead loudly, trying to rid myself of the thoughts biting around the edges of my consciousness. What if he is actually Charles Manson in disguise? My sisters will kill me. And in spite of erasing her, Elaine is still hovering around, too. It’s got to be about Zoe. She’s in hospital so . . . I turn down the music and close my eyes. What if she is actually dying and wants to see me? Wants to give me one last blast before she shoots off into eternity? Suddenly I can hear her again, so plainly. See her, too. Her face contorted in fury, her voice wild with pain.

  ‘Get out of my life, Rose! You slag. I never want to see you again! Remember that. I never ever want to see you again! I mean it. Out!’

  I sit up, open my eyes and pull the earplugs out. Still no Mum, so I call Roger back to see what’s eating him.

  ‘Hey Dodger, it’s me.’

  ‘G’day Rose!’ He sounds busy, as usual, and flat as a tack, like he’s just run a race and lost. ‘And what can I do for you?’

  ‘You rang me, remember?’ I say. ‘You left a message?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he laughs. ‘Hey, Rose, I gotta tell you something important!’ He stops, he obviously can’t remember what it is. This makes me laugh. I can see him standing there screwing up his face and scratching his oily hair trying to remember what it is he’s got to tell me.

  ‘Guess that’s why it was so urgent, huh?’

  ‘No need to get sarcastic!’ he says. ‘Okay, I’ve got it. Here it is.’

  ‘Do I need a paper and pen?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Roger and his brother can usually make me laugh just by being who they are. They act like really efficient, tough businessmen, on the brink of making a million bucks, but underneath they’re both as soft as mud and pretty inefficient, too, if the state of their cars and the café accounts is any indication.

  ‘Those last couple of pieces you did really hit the mark!’ he proclaims. ‘Do more of that personal stuff, Rose. It works.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, all that stuff about meeting your dad’s girlfriend,’ he says loudly. ‘The bitchy sisters, feeling like you want to kill your mother. All that kind of stuff works well for the readers.’

  ‘Really?’ I’m a bit stunned hearing him put it like that. I’d never actually decided to write about my family. But I suppose that’s what I’ve been doing lately. ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re getting a lot of feedback about those pieces. I’ll print out the emails for you when you get back. The punters love ’em.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say uncomfortably, remembering the last few pieces I’d sent in. One was about Christmas Day last summer when Gran came and sorted everyone out. Another was about my sisters coming unannounced to visit me, bringing cakes and soap and stuff, making me feel like the family’s latest lost cause. The last one was about how weird it was to realise that your father is just another boring jerk, when you’ve spent your whole life idolising him.

  ‘Yeah!’ he cuts in, heartily. ‘Hang it on your family, Rose! Hang it on everyone you know. Forget about the plight of Africa and Janette Howard’s dress sense. Forget about people who insist on chucking rubbish out of car windows and boring footballers. The readers love the family stuff. It’s the way to go.’

  ‘Really?’ I ask again, stunned. I suddenly imagine people I know reading my stuff and it doesn’t feel so good. What if my family . . . Oh no! I really break into a cold sweat this time. Thing is, I really don’t think about readers. My little pieces are just an excuse for me to let off a bit of steam, to get all the stuff out. Sure, I try to make them sharp and to the point, but shit! It’s easy to forget there are people out there actually reading them. Ironic, considering that he’s just told me I’m doing so well, but I don’t feel at all good about this now. Maybe I should resign before anyone finds out that I am the sick brain behind Ms Angst.

  ‘Everyone hates their family, Rose,’ Roger adds happily, oblivious to my state of mind, ‘so they identify with what you’re saying.’

  ‘Jeez!’ I feel a bit sick now. I don’t hate my family. Not really. Well, not much anyway. Maybe I do a bit. Maybe I actually love them. I don’t know. So what the fuck am I doing writing these horrible little vitriolic pieces about them?

  ‘Make ’em a bit longer if you like,’ he adds. ‘Have another couple of hundred words. The readers like it. They read the paper. The advertisers get on board. We all make a buck. That’s what it’s all about, Rose. Know what I mean?�
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  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ I say warily.

  ‘I’m very happy with you, Ms Angst,’ he laughs. ‘Very happy.’

  Mum’s an hour late now. Where can she be? Can’t concentrate on the book or the music. I’m getting tired of sitting around watching other people haul kids and boards and bulging bags of food and towels. All their stupid comments make me wish they’d go drown each other.

  Chloe, come here this minute!

  It’s my turn.

  Don’t forget your hat, Brad!

  I’m getting fidgety about Mum. What if that jerk has killed her and the last thing I ever said to her was, ‘See you back here in an hour’? How will that make me feel for the rest of my life?

  Then I start remembering some of my pieces for Sauce and I want to die. What if it comes out? No. It can’t. Who in my family would ever read Sauce? It’s a niche rag for music heads like myself. People pick it up to see where the bands are playing on the weekend. I grit my teeth. Who am I kidding? I’ve already had a close shave.

  ‘Did you write this?’ Barry is standing in the kitchen of the Hurstbridge house holding out a copy of Sauce. I’m immediately wary and then I catapult into full-on panic when I see my logo down in the right-hand corner of the page. Ms Angst is scrawled under the three hundred venom-packed words that demolish a very thinly disguised version of him and Stuttering Stan.

  I manage to stay calm – sometimes I think that is my one truly extraordinary gift in life.

  Don’tcha just hate people in share households who always seem to have a good reason why they can’t clean up after themselves or buy any food? I live with an ugly red-haired six-footer who thinks it’s beneath him to put his hands in a sink of water, and a horse-faced vegan semi-mute who lives on beans and chick peas and is outraged when I suggest he might like to pick up a broom.