by Sarah Laing
‘What do you mean, people are narrow? How can a place as diverse as this be narrow?’ I say.
‘I mean specialist. He was just making the point that I haven’t needed to be in the so-called centre of the world to get a top-notch portfolio together. Maybe being on the fringes has helped me.’
‘Are you saying you want to go back to New Zealand now?’
‘No, Beck, I’m saying the guy from MTV liked my stuff.’
‘Well, that’s great, Toby. An ego boost.’ I feel contrite — I’m too cocked to argue. They say travel is a test of your relationship, and I wonder how ours is scoring.
‘Yeah. But still, no job. It looked like a great place. I would love to do music video design. But they get paid like shit, and the kids work day and night. No one over the age of twenty-eight.’
‘You can design my music videos,’ I say.
‘You’ve got to make the music first.’
‘I’m working on it. Give me a break.’
‘I know. Gotta wait for the muse, right?’
‘Stop it.’ Toby is always giving me shit about what he calls my kooky belief system. He’s a rationalist; he even belonged to the Sceptics Society when he was in Dunedin, but he quit because they were hardcore geeks, almost as fanatical as the fundamentalists.
‘It was amazing going to MTV. There were shrieking teenagers on the traffic islands. I knew I was in the building with someone famous, I just didn’t know who. And the naked cowboy … oh yeah, you know how cold it was today?’
‘I dunno, forty, fifty degrees?’ I’m trying to convert to Fahrenheit.
‘Five degrees C, I’d say. Anyway, the naked cowboy was out there in his white Y-fronts, playing his guitar, his skin all brown like it was the middle of summer. He looked like a Swedish porn star.’
‘Warms your scarfie heart, eh? I wonder whether he was chained naked to a lamppost and sprayed with shaving foam as a youth.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ says Toby. That’s what his loutish mates did to him when he announced he was ditching his Otago computer science degree and moving to Wellington to study computer graphics. He always tells the story like he was an innocent party, but how much of the keg did Toby drink?
‘See, I just don’t think your MTV man appreciates the level of stimulation that goes on in this city. He thinks the grass is greener elsewhere, ’cause he’s been here too long and he’s become deadened,’ I say.
‘He lives in Connecticut. Rides his Harley in. Anyway, maybe we’re the ones with the grass-is-greener complex. Why do we all feel like we have to have an Overseas Experience? Americans don’t — some of them don’t even have their passports.’
‘Did the MTV guy give you some leads?’
‘Yeah, he gave me some numbers of people I could call. Mainly ex-employees who found better-paying jobs. You might get your way yet, Beck.’
‘You’ll find something soon. I know you will.’ It’s weird being cast in this role, the reassurer, because normally it’s the other way round. Toby is the rock in our relationship, calmly going about his business, telling me that I’m brave and talented and doing the right thing, and would I please stop freaking out. This shift has unsettled him.
We met over a collaborative fringe festival show a few years back. A friend hooked us up, suggesting Toby might be perfect to design the multi-media to be projected over my punk-cello performance. I got increasingly agitated about the non-appearance of his visuals, but he remained serene, promising me that they would arrive, just give him a few more days. And of course they would incorporate the nineteen beauty queens and smashing bottles of Thai rose water that I wanted. The day before we opened, he plugged the computer into the video projector and I was blown away. ‘How did you do that?’ I said. ‘How could you make something so amazing without getting stressed?’
‘I’m like a duck,’ he said. ‘Gliding along on top, paddling my flippers furiously underwater. Quack, quack. Nah, actually, I just drank lots of coffee and did a couple of all-nighters. I work best under pressure.’
We sold out three nights in a row, and even though Flight of the Conchords cleaned up, we won a prize at the fringe awards, and got a mention in a couple of newspapers, an interview on Radio Active. I took Toby out for dinner at a cheap Indian restaurant to celebrate; he chose the butter chicken and contracted campylobacter.
A few days later, I went round to his place, an apartment on the corner of Aro Street, to see how he was doing. His flatmate let me in, showing me to his room.
Toby looked drawn and ill against his white futon, a sick bowl sitting on top of an X-men comic, an angle-poise lamp in attendance.
‘Hey, Beck, I’ve been dreaming about you,’ he said, propping himself up on his elbows, his bare chest hairless, his nipples pink.
I felt uncomfortable; I’d already decided he wasn’t my type. He hated classical music and meat was his favourite food. And yet, his chest was beautiful.
‘You weren’t dreaming about murdering me, I hope.’ Over dinner, we had talked about how exacting I was to work with.
‘No,’ he said, grabbing my hand. ‘You have the most amazing calluses.’
‘When I first started cello, my teacher told me to dip my fingertips in methylated spirits to toughen them up.’
‘Wow.’ He stretched out his tongue and licked them, embarrassed when I pulled my hand away. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that. I’m a bit compulsive. I shoplifted as a child.’
‘Really? Me too.’ I put my hand against his chest. ‘I stole an Italian dictionary from the bookshop after I saw A Room with a View. I was going to move to Italy. I still haven’t been.’
‘Italy sounds incredible. We should go together.’ He smiled, then leant over the side of his bed to spew into a metal bowl.
Maybe we should have gone to Italy together, and then returned home. Or maybe I should have sucked it up and had another crack at London. It’s been years since all of that awfulness, that flunked final exam, sneaking back into the country and having to tell people over and over that I wasn’t going to become a concert cellist like my brilliant grandmother after all. And still, Lily lurks in my dreams, and occasionally in my emails. In my dreams, we ride the double-decker bus together, through medieval streets that end up on iron-sand beaches, whales rising out of the gloom. Still, Wendy and I mention Lily as our common ground, as if either one of us could claim her. Lily led me down the gangplank, but she never jumped.
Wendy and Marcella are watching movies together, which means that I can use the computer. I need to write my dispatch, that carefully worded group email that lets everyone know that I am-having-a-wonderful-time and am-making-it-here. When I check my inbox, there are thirteen messages, at least half from my mother, one from my string quartet.
The quartet has another gig for me, this time in New Jersey, playing Philip Glass — am I familiar with him? The first wedding was an eye-opener. I’d only been to one in New Zealand, and that was catered by the Hari Krishnas at the Worser Bay Surf Club. This was something else, set in a Georgian mansion on a lakeside, the bride a mink-clad ice princess in a fairy-lit gondola, berthing to a carpet of white peonies. The wedding guests greeted her in furs. ‘Check out the dress — Vera Wang,’ hissed the bald viola player, as the bride said her vows and we waited to play Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’.
‘Do you think the guests are going to stay there?’ I whispered back, looking at the chalets among the pine trees, lights twinkling as though inhabited by elves.
The couple seemed like they’d been betrothed since birth and were performing a carefully choreographed dance. Their vows were pat, the ritual filled with uncomfortable pauses, and I wondered if they had a pre-nup, and how soon they would be filing for divorce. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get married; it seemed too much like someone else’s dream. And yet the tears in people’s eyes, their faces loaded with hope, moved me despite myself.
We drove back the same night, a doggy-bag of wedding cake in our laps, our
beat-up van retrieved from behind a bush, parked there so it wouldn’t mar the sea of Jaguars and silver Hummers. Yes, I type in my reply email. I’m available that weekend. Send me the music.
There’s an email from Bruno, who lives in Brighton. I get a fizz in my belly — I can’t say I’m over him. The email is disappointingly short, but it says he’s coming to New York next month — can he stay?
It’s not a good time. We don’t have room — Wendy would probably charge him rent. I don’t know how Toby will react; whether he would let a man he suspects I once loved stay. Yet I haven’t seen Bruno since I left for London nine years ago, and I’ve been waiting. I Googled him a couple of years back, sending him a Hi, is that you? email. It was, and he briefed me on his wonderful life. He’d backpacked through South East Asia, became a yogi in India. He’d volunteered with the Médecins sans Frontières in Burma. A few years ago, he’d moved to Brighton, where he worked for an NGO. I replied, trying not to sound like I cared. I told him about my compositions, and he suggested that I put on a fringe show. In a way, he led me to Toby.
I can’t say no; I’ve been ruminating on Bruno for years. I always wondered whether I made a mistake, if I should try to fix it. He can sleep on the sofa or the floor — he’s used to dossing it. Maybe we’ll have our own place by then. Sure, I type. Mi casa es tu casa. I stall over the x’s, signing off with a ciao instead.
There’s also a message from my dad, which is unusual because Mum is in charge of the home-front dispatch and the state of our billeted cat (apparently eating all the native birds; might have to be put down). Dad says he’s had a letter back from Great-aunt Esther, and she would like to meet me; here is the number to call. I write it down in my address book and underline it to strengthen my resolve.
‘Are you done yet?’ asks Toby. He wants to do more ‘research’. I can’t get over how long he can spend on a computer, but he says it was his dad’s fault, giving him an Atari to make up for his mum running off with the stonemason. He claims to enter a Zen-meditative state when coding; his pulse rate drops and his pupils dilate.
‘I suppose,’ I say. My dispatch can wait until I have some real news. A gig maybe, or at least a band.
‘Come watch Donnie Darko with us,’ says Wendy. Maybe I will. At least it’s not The Shining; Wendy watches that every couple of weeks. I sat through it with her once, and it was glorious, but I still haven’t got the stomach for horror movies, and I felt nauseous when the blood washed the floor. Funny thing; I don’t faint at the sight of my own blood, which blooms on my fingertips every couple of hours.
I sit next to Marcella, and she sniffs slightly, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
‘Jake Gyllenhaal is so cute. Why, oh why did I sleep with Mr History Channel? He had man breasts.’
‘Beats me,’ says Wendy, eating Cookies and Cream Häagen Dazs straight out of the tub.
‘He had hairy toes. Red hairy toes. I’m such a fucking disaster. Do you think he’ll give me a job?’
‘Can’t say for sure,’ says Wendy, licking the back of the spoon, eyes fixed on the giant bunny that is appearing at the end of Jake’s bed.
Marcella’s sniffing gets louder, a high-pitched keening coming out of her nose. ‘Things aren’t turning out like I want them to,’ she says.
This seems to happen every week; Marcella will have a melt-down and Wendy will counsel her. A few days later, it will be Wendy’s turn, usually triggered by her excess weight and erratic income. I blame it on a blood sugar spike, but Toby thinks I’m just trying to diabeticise everyone.
‘I think I might retire early,’ I say, but they don’t notice me. I go to my room, now lined with egg cartons to minimise the noise, and practise my first Klara song, adding double-stopping here, a modulation there. I’ll have to sing too, but only after I’ve got this sorted. My voice isn’t pretty, it’s scratchy, but it makes a good contrast, and who can tell anyway when you’re singing with an FX box. I put my photograph of Klara on my music stand, dark curls flying, on the crest of a gorse-thatched hill, cheekbones shadowed, her floral dress blown between her slender legs. My father’s small hand is in hers, his hair blond before it darkened to brown. He gazes up at her solemnly and yet she looks out, over the purple Orongorongos, or perhaps towards Wireless Hill. Maybe she’s talking to my grandfather, Owen, to the right of the photographer, still pioneering and handsome, his brain not yet rotted. It’s not a gaze that I can catch, and yet I hope that its coordinates will change. I want her to look at me.
CHAPTER 8
Wellington, 1990
Last day of term, we were let out early. I was glad the year was over, because it had sucked, and everything had gone wrong. Giovanni couldn’t restore the cello to its original condition: it still buzzed when I played the high notes. It looked ugly too, a putty scar where it used to be honey. I’d had to pay for it out of my savings account, halving the balance of three hundred dollars that had taken me six years to accrue.
‘Let’s go shopping, get a cappuccino,’ said Megan, for once not meeting up with Jeff, who would draw her crotch-close for an after-school embrace. He had a car, an old Ford Escort, and he often drove her home even though the bus went to Wadestown. We were in our school uniforms, which made us stand out, not sophisticated like we wanted to be, but we couldn’t go home and change; that would mean we would have to hand over our report cards.
Samantha slung her graffitied canvas bag over her shoulder, the packet of cigarettes flashing among her books by Sartre and Camus. I hadn’t read either, but I had listened to Samantha describe the paralysis Sartre’s narrator experienced when picking up a handkerchief, when looking in the mirror. I too experienced mirror paralysis, but that was in examination of my pores, which seemed to store a multitude of little white worms, eager to be coaxed out of their holes. And then, the red patchiness that didn’t want to subside, that was still there when I woke up the next morning, despite my three-step soap, clarifying lotion and moisturising routine. I dabbed cover-stick around my chin, but couldn’t quite match the colour. There were girls in our school who would slather their faces with foundation, and the make-up would thicken their hairs. The pimples would still be there; scabs collecting extra pigment, like stucco.
When reciting Sartre, Samantha would stand there in the classroom, framed by wooden lift-top desks, her non-regulation canvas sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, her beautiful small hands shaking to prove her point. She wouldn’t look at you as she re-enacted these scenes; she would look at the ceiling, the white stripe of fluorescent light and the tiles with their stamped holes, which would lift in a breeze then resettle with a thump of particle board, as if there was some monster living in the ceiling. The ceiling was too near; it pressed down on us in boring classes. Samantha would then bend down to pick up the handkerchief and stay flopped, her flexibility a testimony to her ballet lessons, her dyed black hair parting to reveal her blonde roots.
Megan twisted her curls into a knot above her head. ‘Do I look like Helena Bonham Carter?’ she asked. I had finally convinced them to watch A Room with a View with me, my fifth time through. Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy Honeychurch was perfection, her rosebud pout, her almond-milk skin, her hand-span waist. And she got George, not a buffoon at all, but someone too real for his repressive time. Instead of politely strolling and talking about nothing, he climbed up olive trees and yelled ‘Truth! Beauty!’ And although Lucy was repelled by his rawness, she was also attracted to it, and ultimately agreed to be his lover.
‘There’s a certain resemblance,’ I admitted. Bitch. O mio bambino, caro. The music made me melt, longing for the heat of Florence, the promise of romance.
‘Where shall we go?’ said Samantha. ‘Maybe Kahlo’s? Midnight?’
‘Nah, let’s go to Espressoholic,’ said Megan. She’d been hanging out there a lot with Jeff, playing pinball and eating kumara chips with salsa.
I had the deciding vote — I picked Kahlo’s, but first we had to make it down Lambton Quay. I ate my sandwic
hes as we walked past the National Library; although I knew it was unbecoming to eat in public, practically inviting weight jibes, I didn’t want to feel faint. Megan and Samantha were oblivious, random in their appetites.
I was never sure about the three dynamic. It was good, because there weren’t those uncomfortable silences that happened when there were only two of you and you had run out of things to say. But with three, there was always a more favoured one, and that one was never me, so it was only natural that they now had their arms linked, and I walked slightly ahead, slightly behind. Samantha seemed to be inured to Megan’s sharpness, or maybe not a target for it. I found it hard to laugh off her insults, when she called me a peasant, told me to pluck my eyebrows for God’s sake, to take off those turquoise tights or she’d call the fashion police. I thought Samantha ought to be a better friend with me, because we both cared about music, we were still in orchestra together. Megan had quit; she didn’t have time to practise and do homework now that she was with Jeff.
Samantha pulled faces across at me during orchestra. We both impersonated Mrs Grooby the music teacher, a hippy who hennaed her hair to match her red lipstick, forging rivulets beyond her lips. We mimicked her ditsy air and took turns at acting out Aging Siren Seduces Geography Teacher. The act involved lots of eyelash fluttering, lurching and bust fondling, and ended in rebuff. Mrs Grooby had an ex-husband and ex-kids she looked after every second weekend, which Mum thought unnatural. The woman should look after the children, not the man, even if the man is only a postie and has afternoons off and a mother who can help out with the childcare. That woman has lost her dignity, said my mother.
I stepped towards my friends, threading my hand through Samantha’s elbow. She smiled at me, and we were a chain, forcing others off the footpath. Megan was telling Samantha how she drank three cups of tea when she woke up in the morning, because she was English. In fact, she had emigrated from Zimbabwe when she was ten. I drank a glass of warm milk with a spoon of instant coffee stirred in, but wanted to drink espresso, standing up at an Italian café. Samantha unhooked her arm from mine to get her cigarettes out of her bag, to light one.