by Ella Baxter
PRAISE FOR
NEW ANIMAL
‘New Animal is a wild, moving and original debut—and like the best bits of sex and funerals, it’s very, very funny.’
ROBERT LUKINS, author of The Everlasting Sunday
‘If Six Feet Under was transplanted into small-town Australia and centred on a mordantly hilarious mortuary cosmetician in the throes of her Saturn return, it might look something like New Animal. Ella Baxter’s prose is clear, confident, and delectably off-kilter, and Amelia is one of the most memorable heroines I’ve encountered in a long time. Sex, death, humour, and heart—this novel has it all.’
LAURA ELIZABETH WOOLLETT, author of Beautiful Revolutionary
‘So complex is Amelia’s character and narration that as I read New Animal, I found myself squirming with discomfort, sniggering at the earthy and often incongruous humour, and tearing up—often at the same time. New Animal is an unputdownable read, which will linger with you long after you’ve torn through the pages.’
ERIN HORTLE, author of The Octopus and I
‘Equal parts profound and profane. Somehow both darkly hilarious and just plain dark. Baxter gives you everything you want in a debut—fresh ideas, fresh language, and fresh blood. She has officially exploded into the literary scene. I shrieked with laughter and horror. New Animal is a book for anyone who’s struggled with the interminable disconnect between brain and body. I tore through this and I guarantee you will too.’
BRI LEE, author of Eggshell Skull
‘A novel about having so much grief you want to break your body to match your heart. New Animal is funny, raw, gutsy and stealthily sweet. I sobbed my way through the last few pages and was left feeling bruised, but also wiser, braver and more generous.’
EMILY MAGUIRE, author of An Isolated Incident
Ella Baxter is a writer and artist living in Melbourne.
First published in 2021
Copyright © Ella Baxter 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76087 779 8
eISBN 978 1 76106 118 9
Internal design by Simon Paterson, Bookhouse
Set by Bookhouse, Sydney
For Lumi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
There is a man with kind eyes and crooked teeth in my bed. He’s facing me and smiling, preparing to talk. I cough once, loudly, because talking is unnecessary at this point.
We both watched patiently as he prodded my vagina with his hangnailed finger, and we took turns sighing mid-thrust.
Afterwards, Adam squashes my memory foam pillow until it’s wedged beneath his armpit for support. He squints at my framed certificate hanging above the bookshelf. My stepdad Vincent paid for the framing in honour of all the technical skills I had to learn, because he likes to celebrate stamina and effort. My mother even made a cake.
‘Certificate IV in Embalming, awarded to Amelia Aurelia,’ Adam reads aloud.
‘I tend to focus more on the cosmetics aspect,’ I explain.
‘Right,’ he says, turning towards me. ‘Funeral make-up.’ He purses his lips, while continuing to crush my only good pillow.
I kick at the bed sheet until it’s down around our ankles. The cotton has absorbed the smell of sweat and salt. Some foot odour and a slight muskiness lingers. I toss the whole thing onto the floor and lie back on the bed, uncovered but still sticky in the muggy room. The February moon must be close to full because the clouds are low and brightly backlit. I can’t help but feel that if it were a bit darker, we wouldn’t be making so much accidental eye contact. He smothers a yawn, and I force my own mouth into a yawn shape so that we can yawn together and pass some time.
Adam picks up his wineglass from the bedside table and I watch him, wondering how I would do his make-up if he passed. Accentuate his ambiguous heritage maybe. Fill in his eyebrows and sweep a bit of bronzer along each temple. His hair would look lovely brushed back, too. Some of that high shine cream could really bring out the warm brunette tones. A burgundy shirt.
I glance quickly at the side of his face.
Forest green would also suit him.
As the pause stretches out, and he shows no sign of leaving, I wonder if he has assumed he’s sleeping the night.
I get up to use the bathroom; it’s important to urinate after sex, otherwise bacteria climbs up your urethra like a staircase. As I slide the ensuite door shut behind me, I can hear Adam change position in the bed less than a metre away. I can even hear him scratch an itch. I lean over to the sink and run the tap until the sound of water is louder than anything else, and my vagina can finally relax.
I take a moment to acknowledge my naked body. Longlimbed with the slightest hint of a tan. I turn to the side to look at my face in the mirror. The freckles smattered across my nose and cheeks are best seen in morning light, when they look rose gold. Under fluorescent lighting I just seem spotty. Kind of warm on the colour scale—reddish hair. Auburn usually, but fire when the setting sun hits it. Dark eyes and a long, aquiline nose. It’s hawkish. I have been told a few times by people not related to me that my face is full of character.
I flush the toilet and wash my hands slowly. I’m unsure if he will ever leave. I could initiate sex again but make it better by telling him to slow down until he’s barely moving. This slow? he might say—like they all say, incredulous. Even slower, I will tell him.
I shake my hands dry and slide the door open, making immediate eye contact with Adam, who raises his empty wineglass towards me.
‘Refill?’
I slip through the beaded curtain separating the bed and the kitchenette, and it clatters together in a loose tangle behind me.
‘It’s getting late,’ I say, sliding a bottle of wine behind the kettle.
‘So will you be working on someone tomorrow?’ he asks, while pulling at some leg hairs on his exposed thigh.
‘Yes. There’s a big funeral, actually.’
‘Why big?’
‘She’s young and it was suicide.’ I cross my arms and check the clock. It’s almost midnight.
‘Oh,’ Adam says. ‘Wrists or neck?’
‘Wrists,’ I say, rejoining him in bed. ‘In the bath.’
‘Shit,’ he says.
I’m used to people impulsively asking the mo
st macabre questions, then being unsettled by the answers.
What does a body smell like? Chemicals. Sometimes like talcum powder. Sour.
What does a body feel like? Firm and cold. Clammy. Heavy.
Does it ever move? Yes. But you begin to expect the slow decompression. It helps to think of them as old balloons at times. They deflate.
Does it frighten you? No. Never. Sometimes. Rarely.
I can see Adam gearing up to keep talking, but I don’t have the patience to answer all his questions in a way that will both satiate his curiosity and maintain my professionalism, so I reach for my phone, select the first album that appears, then lie back as the opening bars start to tinkle out from the tiny speaker. Snare drum fights for space. I am twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine. The tambourine commences. I should turn this down so it doesn’t wake Mum and Vincent. Relentless rattling metal of the tambourine. Or my brother, but he should really move in with Hugh and Carmen. Tambourine outplays the snare. He’s thirty now. Trumpet interrupts them both. Time to go, Simon, you lump. Trumpet and tambourine fight. At least I live in the bungalow, not the main house. Trumpet wins. It has a separate entrance.
The main house is fundamentally suburban. Two brown leather couches and one pine bookshelf, which proudly display a large collection of Reader’s Digest. But the bungalow is different. It has a rug woven from strips of rags. It has floor cushions, most of them remnants from when Vincent had a mild interest in Buddhism and used it as his meditation zone. For one whole winter he wore kimonos and spoke softly when he remembered to. As he slowly lost interest, I equally slowly moved the contents of my bedroom into the bungalow until all my furniture surrounded his, and just like that we swapped places.
‘Is it gross?’ Adam asks.
‘It’s the opposite.’ I rub one eye and let out another wide yawn.
‘Lovely?’ He looks suspicious.
‘Very.’
The deceased are beyond beautiful, but only because they are so emptied of worry. Everything tense or unlikable is gone. Like a shopping centre in the middle of the night, they have lost all the chaos and clatter.
‘Is it gory?’ Adam wants to know. ‘Like, when you see how they died?’
I stare steadily at his hands, which are clasped together. ‘It can be.’
I think about all the skulls I’ve had to drill back together, and all the wounds I’ve filled with plaster of Paris. On some days, I’ll unzip a bag that contains a body so broken it has become like shards of ice; like unearthed soil. There are hours in which all I do is map a whole person out. And even though he’s asking, I won’t tell him that we are both two long, fleshy sacks full of bones and electricity, and that one day the switch will be flicked. We are on, and then we are off.
I’ve told people down at the pub that life rests like a layer of chiffon over a body: one puff of wind and you’re dead. It’s a revelation that doesn’t sit easily with most, but I’ve learned to adjust by compartmentalising. I can separate feelings into imaginary boxes inside the mind. In one box, I put all the delicate, fractured wounds of the bodies I see all day. I fill it up with uncomfortable emotions and images. Then, in another box, I shove all the vivid warmth and liveliness of the people I see at night. I need both boxes, one balancing out the other, me ping-ponging between them.
Adam crosses his legs, letting his limp penis hang between us, somehow a part of the conversation but disengaged.
‘Do they look empty?’
He seems genuinely thrilled that we are talking.
‘Sure,’ I say. It’s not inaccurate.
‘So what made you do this for a job?’
‘It’s my family’s business, but I would have picked it anyway.’
‘You love it that much?’
‘I do.’
I squeeze his thigh, pressing each finger one by one into his leg. I push my chest forward and gaze at him, while trying to lengthen my neck and look elegant. Shakespeare once wrote that two people together is a beast with two backs, and most nights I find myself trying to combine with someone else to become this two-headed thing with flailing limbs, chomping teeth and tangled hair. This new animal. I am medicated by another body. Drunk on warm skin. Dumbly high on the damp friction between them and me.
‘You’re quite confident, aren’t you?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘And you seem to want to have sex again?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do you want me to go down on you?’ he asks.
‘Not right now,’ I say.
I stand at the foot of the bed and put my t-shirt back on, and then cross one leg in front of the other so that my vulva is at least partly covered. I find that redressing sometimes helps to get things moving again. There has to be an element of desire in order for us both to get a bit lost in the mix.
‘I want you to say to me, I’m going to ruin you, in a low voice,’ I tell him as he kneels up on the bed facing me.
He frowns, confused. ‘I’m going to ruin you?’ He wobbles slightly and places one hand over his crotch.
‘More heat, please,’ I say.
He raises a hand half-heartedly, before dropping it and looking out the window. ‘I am going to absolutely ruin you.’
‘Say to me: I’m going to obliterate everything you know to be real.’
‘Amelia, no. I don’t want to.’
‘Say the other bit then.’
‘I will ruin you. I. Will. Ruin. You.’
‘Perfect,’ I say. ‘Now lie down and put the pillow under your hips.’
Adam falls asleep afterwards, which most men are wont to do, but I kick him near his knee.
He sits up and opens one eye.
‘You need to leave,’ I say, trying to look less mean by hunching my shoulders and letting my long fringe fall across my face. Crankiness is pinned to the structure of my features. I was made to look mad; it’s in my genetics, and I have to make a lot of effort to seem tiny and cute. ‘I sleep better when I’m alone.’
I switch the bedside lamp on, and stare at him while he shields his eyes. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he picks up his clothes using his toes and passes them back to his fumbling hands. Pausing, yawning, and sighing before each action.
‘Why do I feel like I’m not going to see you again?’ he asks while standing up and placing a hand on the doorknob.
Turn it. I will him to turn it. Turn the handle, Adam.
I shake my head. ‘Don’t be silly.’ I take one last look at him.
I stay sitting upright listening to him step quietly down the garden path, only relaxing when I hear the front gate open and shut. I crawl across the bed and pull the curtains closed, before lying back and pulling the sheet over me, smoothing it down on either side until I can feel that there are no creases. My spine curves into the mattress. My jaw releases with a creak and my molars stop aching.
I open the dating app on my phone and scroll down the screen until I find Adam’s smiling face. I delete it, and keep refreshing my recent matches until four new ones pop up. I copy and paste a message to each of them.
Free tonight?
Free tonight?
Free tonight?
Free tonight?
CHAPTER TWO
At eleven a.m., the landscape already crackles on its way to reaching forty degrees before lunch, and the sound of Kathmandu water bottles being refilled ricochets between the three major holiday parks. Radiant heat beams off the coastline in long fumes, shuddering over highways and interstate buses as the liquid inside our bodies hits a quivering boil. The Northern Rivers in summer shakes the shit out of you.
I stand blinking in the light on the welcome mat in front of the main house. My mother leaves the front door unlocked and a coffee on the console table in the hallway for me each morning. I let myself in, pick up the coffee, and then stroll through to the lounge room where Simon and his partners Hugh and Carmen are sitting on the couch. Everyone has been buzzed about Simon’s new throuple, and the three of them have acc
epted our enthusiasm with grace.
‘Morning,’ Simon says, looking up from the laptop which is balanced on his knees.
‘Come and check this out,’ says Carmen. ‘I think we found one we like.’
I walk over and look at the screen.
‘It’s a two-year-old Carpet python called Harry,’ Simon says.
‘Hello, beautiful …’ murmurs Hugh, while Carmen, who is running the mouse along her thigh, hovers the cursor between the snake’s nostrils.
My mother clacks in from the kitchen, wearing heeled sandals and a sundress, her figure like an ancient fertility sculpture that could be placed in the bottom of a grain barrel for luck.
‘I still think a dog would work better than a snake, if anyone else is on board?’ She passes me a platter of marzipan fruit, which she makes each week as a snack for the bereaved. Mourners need sugar; it helps keep their blood pressure from dropping and stops them from fainting.
‘Our reptile licence came yesterday,’ says Simon.
Our mother scrunches her nose and drapes her hair over one shoulder, combing her fingers through the length of it, and I smooth down my own, trying to make it sit flat against my head. I know she gets up early to blow her hair out each morning; I can hear it from the bungalow. People often compliment her hair, admiring how groomed and polished she is.
‘We can discuss it later over dinner,’ she says. ‘As a family.’ She beams at Carmen and Hugh, before grabbing her keys from the table and heading to the door.
‘Or you could move out,’ I say to Simon. ‘Then you could have as many snakes as you want.’
‘Goodbye, Amelia,’ he says as I pass him my half-drunk coffee and follow my mother out the door, carrying the marzipan.
Outside, the season continues to announce itself everywhere like an extrovert. Trailing coastal succulents that have been unremarkable for most of the year are now filled with dark pink flowers blooming all at once. Nature has no sense of pacing. The footpath beneath them is stained magenta from where their petals have been trodden on by enthusiastic, early morning joggers, and the effect is like tie-dyed waves underneath my shoes.