Elmyra told him on the phone, in a stream of rapid word-vomit, that she’s blu-tacked to her mother’s door a flimsy-plastic danger do not enter sign. She said she got it from the cheap shop in town, the same place she got her plastic crucifix.
And now, alone in the house, she doesn’t invite Markus in with words; rather, it’s her eyes that draw him in. The activity inside, suspended momentarily to answer a knock at the door, distracts him from the weight of the situation. A kettle lost in a wild, boiling roar, quietening. Piles of clothes systematically laid out on the kitchen table — dirty, clean, and folded. Dotted between, and spilling out onto the kitchen bench nearby, are vases with flowers and cards embossed in looped script that fails to express the deepest sympathy it purports.
I didn’t bring anything, he says. He stops to let her pass.
She’s close behind him, not looking at him. She runs one of her hands, fingers splayed, through her soft, long hair as she passes by him. Her scent is numb, sleepy. She takes down two mugs from a kitchen overhead cupboard and then looks at him.
It’s not ice or glass or any other clichéd glaze in her eyes; it’s exhaustion.
I’ll get it, he says.
She shrugs, returning to the table to fold the clean and dried clothes.
Markus drops a spoonful of instant into each mug. He notices that the clothes she’s washed, all of the clothes, are her mother’s clothes. He knows this because the fabric’s cut and the patterned intensity of these clothes are not as exact or as fine as what he knows Elmyra prefers. He lightens the coffee with milk, and offers a mug to her. She appraises it and continues folding.
She stops when she comes to a white shirt. Tightens the fabric between her hands.
You okay?
There’s a stain.
He lifts his chin, trying to peer to where her gaze is fixed. He says, You can wash it again, yair? Elba makes me use this—
Fuck, she spits. She drops the shirt. She runs a hand through her hair, combing it back.
What’s wrong? he says, though as the words leave him, they sound wrong.
I’m fucken hopeless is what’s wrong.
That’s not—
Enough, she cuts him off. She moves past him, opens a drawer and takes out a permanent marker. Across the room, where she opens the door to her mother’s room. The plastic danger sign falls down.
Fuck, he breathes. He sets down his coffee and follows after her.
Elmyra’s cleaned Mrs Robinson’s room, and packed away the knickknacks into a few small cardboard boxes. Only a bed, stripped of its sheets, and two bedside tables remain. Elmyra crawls on her hands and knees to the middle of her mother’s mattress. She uncaps the permanent marker, biting the cap off with her teeth. Still. Then, she begins scrawling. The nib scratches across the thin threads of her mother’s bare bed. Catching and breaking away, catching again. Her hand moves steadily across the mattress, swipes back towards the middle to continue writing.
She jerks upright; her knees depress the mattress as if to engulf her body. She throws the permanent marker at the wall and falls in on herself. She stays side-on, lying across the words she’s written.
Markus squats beside the bed and rests his chin on top of the mattress. She’s looking at him, and he at her.
She whispers, I’m sorry.
He smiles. He stands. Helps her to her feet. He takes her to the bathroom and tells her, I’ll stay here while you shower. He waits to hear the rush of water before going back to her mother’s bedroom. He picks up the ‘danger’ sign from the floor, chucks it on the mattress, and closes the door behind him. He walks back down the hallway and sits beside the bathroom door.
When she comes out sometime later, her body’s sweaty, red, and she smells of honeysuckle and lemon myrtle. He takes her to her own bedroom. When she’s sunk beneath her bed’s flower canopy, safe under the heavy doona, he sits at her dresser and waits until she’s asleep. She’s breathing heavily. He turns to the three mirror panes on the dresser: three of him look back from three different angles. He plays with the glass perfume bottles. When he lifts them, they leave clean circles in the dust that’s settled. He moves them around, their vibrant tones clinking into each other. This is where she used to become Marilyn.
A few days later, he decides to revisit Elmyra. He’s not heard from her. Buff had messaged him and said she’d set a manky mattress on fire in her front yard. Markus wrote his response straight away and then waited an hour to send it. He’d said: the mattress isn’t the point.
Buff responded within a minute: exactly u soft cock.
Markus imagines Elmyra sinking into a bathtub of slow-moving steaming water. Not drowning, just resting beneath the surface while a candle burns fire into the room. He sends back to Buff: have you seen her.
everyday u?
For a moment Markus wants to respond with no she has you but he doesn’t.
On the day he has chosen, a high sun waits for him. He tugs up his polo’s collar. No wind. The canopied drive gives shelter. Toward the end of the driveway, he heads over to the orange geraniums, from which he picks full-flowering blooms and three other fine stems with unbloomed buds. He jumps in the empty potholes in the road to town and smiles and laughs and wishes Grayson were here. And that there was rain. Blue. Water to turn the potholes into tiny lakes. A car with its lights on full-beam gains distance. He’s looking at the twinkle they make in the heat wave, liquid rising off the road’s surface.
If I stay here, it’s almost as if none of what has happened ever happened at all. If I stay still. As if all is normal and continual and eternal, like the arching emptiness of the dogged sunlight whipping across the surface at the public pool. Only the pool’s waterless. Looking past the car’s headlights flashing—
Move, dickhead!
Markus stumbles onto the gravel at the side of the road and the deep-twilight-blue car speeds on behind him. He looks at the geraniums he’s picked for Elmyra, and throws them into the tall wild oats growing between the side of the road and the fenced-off paddock at his left. He can’t give her flowers; he needs a gesture bigger than petals and stamens and unopened buds.
That’s when he gets a call from Georges, which distracts him completely from Elmyra. Because the rippling water returns, unrevealing and dazzling: Georges’s eyes. The blue that’s been seeping into his vision has been there since last time. Last time, the pearly-white circling Georges’s blue was tarnished by thin red capillaries that’d blown, and which wriggled like the vibrant roots of seaweed. Back then, in the pub as ‘Otis’ played, Georges had said that he was rooted because he’d driven from the city late at night to get to Narioka in time for Grayson’s funeral. This time, years later, Georges says he’s won a wanky award in the city and that Narioka Council’s asked him to bring some artwork for the country folk. For inspiration (and to scoff at).
He says to Markus that it’d be nice if they could catch up.
Yair.
Georges says, I get the feeling much has changed and no one’s sat drunken in a bar and reviewed the progress.
Wind’s cold and comes through Markus’s thinning jumper, which he’s had since he was in year six and that nineteen-year-old cricketer from Manchester (UK) came to play for a season. Markus had heard Manchester fucking a girl from the pub into uncontrolled moans — both hers and his. Markus knows stories of girlfriends wearing items of their boyfriends’ clothes, like the girl from the pub the next morning was wearing one of Manchester’s shirts with the word ‘OBEY’ across her breasts. In the days before Manchester was to fly back to the UK, Markus had snuck into his room and stolen a clean-smelling brown jumper out of the tallboy. It seemed like the only thing he could do to maintain his infatuation with Manchester, because, even though Manchester had never laid a finger (or any other body part) on him, Markus wanted to, just like the girl from the pub, feel close to him. Markus is wearing th
at jumper today. It is old and thinning, but it still fits him, and something this old and from another time is hard to throw away.
There’s a seat across from Markus where Georges will sit.
The emptiness of the chair and its potential makes him recall how, in year ten, Buff said he’d gone to a Nine Inch Nails concert in the city and that it wasn’t lame to line up after the gig for Ternt/Kent/Trent to sign his CD. CDs, Grayson had said as if they were as ancient as paper and pen. Who on earth buys CDs? And Buff had said nothing. Something he’d been unaware of had been brought to his attention.
Markus shakes his head and looks down the street. Silly stuff. The wind disarms him. His thoughts are promising.
Seeing someone you’ve not seen for years is like regaining a part of yourself you hadn’t realised you’d lost, or like finding money in the washing. Markus realises this as soon as Georges hugs him. They come together, and Georges makes a quiet joke about being the only ‘two’ in Narioka. As they hug, Georges’s biceps press firm against Markus.
They break apart.
Markus says, You got fit. He laughs.
There’s like an expectation that I have a fit body now, Georges says. And I like to prove them wrong.
How so?
There’s this club in St Kilda, says Georges, maybe it’s the crystal, maybe the beat, but all the guys get down to their jockstraps. Mostly it’s hairy-fucker bears with beer guts and sweaty chests. He pauses. It’s actually quite repulsive.
Is that why you do it?
To be repulsive? No, Markus. Spartan strength doesn’t armour you. Nor does a beer gut and hairy chest. Georges winks. The sweat is what gives you away. He pauses and takes a sip of water. He says, I’ve been at the movies with Elmyra and Cecily. Gatsby. Fucken thing ran longer than expected. The man wouldn’t die. D’you know it makes me really sad that he didn’t want to leave Daisy. He hums to the music playing over the café’s PA above them. He says, I loved Gatsby since the first time we read it at school. I know I wasn’t the only one.
Markus pours himself a glass of water, to which Georges raises his own in a cheers. I reread it recently, Markus says. Found it a bit Baroque.
Isn’t that the way of love?
Markus shrugs. Runs his finger around the rim of his glass. Says, What have you been doing the last few years? I didn’t hear from you in between.
And I didn’t hear from you, Georges says. Mostly? Mum and I go to gallery openings, and eat way too much food. I’m sure people thinks it’s lame we spend so much time together, but she did push me out into this world. And, honestly, it’s so much more meaningful spending time with her than with some uptight little fairy that only wants a fuck.
Markus tries to play it cool. That can’t be all that bad.
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mind the sex, but it’s so tedious sometimes, and I’d much prefer to do things I enjoy with people I enjoy being around.
You’ve been busy then?
Sure, Georges says curtly. And you?
Markus looks into his glass, then up and around as he says, Just been here, I guess.
You guess?
Markus shrugs. You’ve lived here. You know what it’s like.
Sure.
Anyway, says Markus. I wanted to say that I liked your exhibition.
Before they met up here, Markus had popped into the Town Hall where the exhibition was. An old lady handed him a booklet, printed on A4 paper and folded in half. It had the titles of each of the paintings and a short description; Markus had thrown it away. They were big canvases, ceiling-height in the old school hall and coloured black, white, and grey. None of them were framed. It was as if they each bled over their individual edges and grew into each other. They were sketch-like oil paintings, mostly of men: some naked, some clothed, some together, some alone. There was nothing provocative or progressive, and Markus had only been able to tell that they were men because he’d been looking hard enough through the restless paint-strokes, which Georges’s deliberate hand had seemingly placed in an attempt to censor the truth. They made Markus smile. He wanted to get in between the layers of colour, where the tones shifted and changed and intermingled. They each seemed so full that he felt like if he stood closer, he’d breathe in what he hasn’t accepted in himself.
Georges asks, What did you think?
Markus says, They’re better than the ones you did in high school.
That’s because I’ve given up trying to explain myself, Georges says. Cold War Kids, y’know, dancing like a martyr.
It softens Markus to hear him mention Cold War Kids.
Georges says, It’s a shame I have to go early in the morning. I have to pack the exhibition away. He says, You should come to the big smoke sometime.
Markus replies, One day.
You know when we were in high school and all those boys used to make fun of me? Hearing this said aloud shocks Markus, who fumbles for an explanation, a defence of himself. Georges holds up a hand. You had your own shit to deal with, he says. This is about me. For a moment, Georges is very serious, but then he smiles and his smiling mouth drifts into his words. At the time, my father got sick and I watched him get sicker and sicker, as I started to hate myself more and more because of what those boys were saying, doing, to me. I was cutting myself, taking drugs, crying. And one day when my dad was still at home, he heard me crying.
Markus can’t look at him directly.
Dad comes in, coughing, these massive fucken black bags under his eyes. Sits beside me and says, what are yer doin’, mate? I think he knew that I knew what he meant, even though I said I didn’t, because the next thing he says is, everyone’s a cunt, some worse than others, trick is don’t let the real bad ones tell yer any different. I nodded, pretending that I still didn’t know he knew his son was a little queer.
But I’m—
Shouldn’t matter what I am, Markus, or what I’m not.
What does it matter then?
It matters because ‘one day’ will get away from you. And here, in Narioka, especially.
The wind blows up from the paddocks outside town and makes Markus’s jumper flap against his body and his fringe blow into his eyes. Each time he wipes his hair away, he catches a different aspect of the view before him: the skate park; eucalypts; a finished plate of dinner. None fit together. Except Georges. There’s that urge toward him, which has now reshaped itself into Markus wanting Georges to pick him up.
Georges studies Markus, and then asks, You had a twenty-first? I figured my invite just got lost in the mail. An innocent smile indicates a joke.
Markus says, My twenty-first kinda got lost in everything else.
It would’ve been nice to celebrate. Not everyone gets to.
Maybe. Y’know, things get in the way, and then Elmyra’s mother …
Georges doesn’t know.
Mrs Robinson topped herself.
No.
El didn’t say anything at the movies?
Georges shakes his head. Or Cec. He looks at the pattern in the pavement. The entire movie and neither of them …
Markus shrugs and says, I think she’s enjoying the space.
That’s vulgar, Markus, really.
And Markus reminds Georges that Elmyra had cared for her mother since year eight, cared for her like trying to cure a disease.
Whether or not Elmyra is enjoying the new space created by her absent mother, the next morning, as Markus is hanging washing out on the line, he can’t quite believe he’d said it. Perhaps seeing Georges had made him say more than he’d anticipated; perhaps what he said was, purely, an explanation for how he feels about Elmyra and her mother. He’s hanging undies by their corners with one peg. The Hills Hoist’s wire is beginning to fray. This whole time he’s avoided reconnecting with his oldest friend because he hasn’t felt he’s had the right way to go about it.
Fuck it. Inside, he tosses the washing basket into the laundry trough. Into his room, where he dons a hoodie and his orange Vans.
He ducks out the back door, walking through the paths between the veggie beds, toward the shed. He opens the gun cabinet and takes out his father’s gun. He collects two shots, and two shots only, before heading around the front of the house, to Rene’s ute. He places the gun behind the driver’s seat. Takes a moment before he gets in. Elmyra swirls like a wide skirt through his hesitation.
Markus drives to Elmyra’s house. Kills the engine when he arrives. Vibrations still tingling in him as he walks up the front path and knocks on door. She doesn’t answer, of course, so he jumps the side fence and goes around the back. The sliding door is open. Sitting beside the fruit bowl on her dining-room table is a postcard he found in St Vinnies years and years ago. Light reflects off the Pink Lady apples in the bowl, giving the card in a rosy glow. He’d given it to her one birthday. It has on its front a picture of Marilyn Monroe, without make-up and looking directly at the viewer.
El, he calls into the space. You in here? He goes to her bedroom.
She’s sleeping inside. Her head almost covered entirely by the doona, in a cocoon of her own making. Beside her sleeps Buff Burrows. Immovable. Of course he is. His back’s not covered by the doona. Exposed.
El, he whispers so as not to wake Buff. He places his hand on her shoulder. Wake up, El.
She stirs.
El.
She recoils, takes a moment to assess. The fuck, Markie? she mumbles.
He places a finger over his mouth, glares at Buff beside her.
We’re sleeping.
Were, he corrects.
What?
C’mon, he whispers, heading over to her wardrobe. He carefully opens the doors and looks at the rainbow of colour inside.
Where are we going? He sees in her tri-fold mirror that she’s stretching under the covers. He sees as she rolls over to Buff and presses her lips to his temple.
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