by Colin Varney
“Because …?” Mum struggled with the words. “Because of the Zeppelin?”
Nicole nodded.
They curved around a barren stretch skirting a stubbled slope. A wire fence like empty staves of a score underlined the rise. Mum pulled over and cut the engine. The sudden silence was too full of possibilities.
“Here,” she said.
Nicole cracked open the door. A chill greeted her, the tenacious Tasmanian winter still infecting spring. She carried the canister along the verge. Wind chastened her cheeks, like a breeze on a blush. Birdsong, delicate and dulcet. Crunch crackle—soles on gravel.
“How far gone are you?” Mum’s voice friable, with a hint of awe.
“Don’t know. I’m a month overdue.” Nicole addressed the canister rather than her mother.
“Have you had a test?”
Nicole shook her head, but she and I knew she was lying. She was the plotter now, scheming against her loved ones. She peered back at Mum standing by the open car door. She looked so lonely.
Mum approached Nicole, examining a spoon as if baffled by its function. While Nicole gripped the canister, Mum levered the plug out of the top. The spoon made it look like they were opening some kind of foodstuff. Nicole stared into the grey and white granules, innocuous, speckled. Remembering dehyde-Dad. Instant parent. She yearned to add moisture, to see him rise from the pot like a genii.
They both grasped the plastic.
“Are you sure this is the best place?” Nicole’s tone churchy. “This is what he wanted?”
Mum nodded. “He told me. Trust me.”
Mum was thinking of the single. I popped in and out of her head. Brief visit.
They tilted the capsule and shook clumsily, crab-walking. Pa peppered the side of the highway. Nicole wondered if she’d expected to see something macabre—a piece of cartilage or tooth. Dad dust billowed back at her, powdering her jeans and arms. She released her grip, laughing at the coating on the back of her hand, inexplicably happy. She smeared it, studying the stain on her fingers.
“He doesn’t want to leave me,” she blurted.
Mum completed the job, shaking vigorously. She paced purposefully back to Nicole, halting in front of her, the brick held firmly between them. Nicole was shocked by how old she looked. Skin like scrunched paper. Veins of pain cracking her cheeks. Red hair rusting. Her watery, caramel eyes were both determined and terrified.
“Listen to me. Your child will be perfectly healthy.” She enunciated each word in an exaggerated fashion. “Your child cannot inherit anything from your father.” The eavesdropping breeze shushed. “Neither can you. Do you understand?” Shutdown. I checked: Nicole wasn’t thinking.
“Your dad is definitely and absolutely your dad. But he is not your …” it dribbled from her lips “ … sire.”
Mum gave a little frown at the unfamiliar word. For a moment Nicole thought Mum might giggle.
One! … Two! … Three! … Four!
Nicole stumbled in the ditch. Stones turned beneath her heels, launching spears of pain from her ankles. She pushed and tugged at the wires of the fence like it was an unsolvable puzzle. Found herself caught in the strands, folded, limbs zigzagged, deafened by her own panting. Marionette in a sweat. So tangled up in herself she couldn’t see her surroundings. Wire clattering.
Next thing she knew she was hurtling uphill. Clumps and sods threatened to unbalance her; her arms sent strange signals. Gym vim in her limbs propelled her upwards. The wind was harsher on the slope, blocking her ears. The sky tilted closer. She felt fragile as an emptied egg, a sucking void inside. Stumbling to a stop, she pirouetted slowly, as if savouring a view. She saw she was far up the rise. Her mother had negotiated the fence but then foundered, stymied by those clogs. She listed in the gusts, frayed curls licking the air above her. Nicole couldn’t remember freeing herself from the wire. She expected to see herself still strung there.
She turned into the wind. It made her breathless. The roar of it drowned the sound of her mother crying her name.
On the journey home Nicole slumped on the backseat, ears stoppered with iPod buds. The volume deafening and distorting. She could see Mum talking incessantly, compulsively, as she drove, seemingly to a passenger beside her. Some form of confession perhaps. Nicole viced her temples, forcing the phones in until they stung.
The hills sucked in the light to deepen their lustre. As the sky condensed, Nicole watched her reflection develop on the windowpane. Features fallen, melting. Pale as a goth. Smear of ash on one cheek like a primitive daub. As she fought to keep the hazy image in focus, the shrubs, posts and trees became a whiz, a race of whey, green and tan. A tape spooling too fast; a slide show on steroids. At first, Nicole felt a seethe of excitement, like a kid who has overachieved at hoopla and must choose from a plethora of prizes. Then the ever-moving landscape sent a rumble from her gut like a strum on a double bass. There was nothing to hold onto in the blur. She expected the flimsy face to ribbon in the whipping wind. She felt herself being pitched by the lurching car and cried out for her mother to pull over. The vehicle slew to a standstill and she grappled with the door handle. She retched into the roadside grass.
Mum hovered by the back passenger door. “Does that happen a lot? In the morning? Nicole?”
Nicole was grateful for the air on her clammy forehead. She was attracted to a discolouration on the bitumen, a rounded blotch. She ambled towards it but leapt back as a ute blasted past. She was convinced it was part of a letter—a B or P. She wondered if any of her father’s declaration of love as intended for space travellers could have survived this long.
She shook herself. There were no Bs or Ps in her father’s message. And he wasn’t her father.
“Did he ever paint that sentence?” she shouted to Mum. “The love trail of letters on the highway? Is any of it true?”
“I never saw it.” Mum’s voice was lifeless. “He told me he did, but I never saw it.”
“But he drove from Ulverstone? That night?”
Mum nodded wearily. “He didn’t know, Nicole. That he wasn’t your dad. He didn’t know until …” She scuffed gravel, punishing her toes. “Except he was. He was your dad. He just wasn’t your …”
“Don’t say that stupid word again.”
“He was completely shitfaced that night. Messed up by pills and booze. Sex? No way. He couldn’t.”
“Someone did.”
Curls whipped and snapped at Mum’s eyes. “It was easy to convince him we’d done it that night. He didn’t remember a thing. And I had to lie about the condoms. About the …” Her face experimented with smiling. “I loved him. I was seeing someone else but it was always him I adored. I was young and stupid, Nic. I—”
“Who? Whose daughter am I?”
“You don’t know him. He went away. You never …” word dribble “… met.”
“Does he know about me?”
Mum shook her head.
Nicole was quivering. It was good to blame the cold. Mum tossed her arms around herself, stroking and patting as though checking she was really there. Nicole eased nearer to the blotch on the bitumen. The moan of an approaching vehicle soothed her. Something in its longing tone harmonised with her. The choral note became a growl as the sedan hurtled towards her.
She heard her mother shriek. “Nicole! Don’t!”
Critics have carped about my obscurity, but for some I’m not obtuse enough. Many humans have played me backwards, winding vinyl anti-clockwise or manipulating me on computers. They crane in close, ears reared, intent on the whorling sonic sludge. Most of them find messages mired in the molasses. Involving religion, anti-religion, intergalactic optimism or advice from Jim Morrison. I’ve attended with interest too and discovered nothing, but fiddling with thought is what I do best. One thing I abhor, though, are those seeking exhortations to self-harm. Listening hard, straining for the command.
Lemme tell you ’bout Randall. He was fifteen when his boyfriend left him for somebody else. It did
n’t help that the somebody else was female. It fed Randall’s dread that his sexuality was invalid, a game he was playing. I thought the sweet ache of heartbreak would be dreamy and poignant— crying in the rain, sighing over old snaps. Tears as friends, Vaseline lensed. Instead, it was scabrous and squalid. Randall found himself in a bath wondering why he wasn’t concerned about the jagged pain in his lower arm, ropes of red fraying and splaying in the body-warm water. I’d been the favourite tune of the lovers during their first thrilling weeks together, so he had me on maximum volume, reverberating around the fusty flat. Now he was bemused by the noise and everything that was happening to him. He knew he’d felt adrift during the past few weeks and had finally taken control of something. He knew that others would soon understand the profundity of his pain. He knew that his former boyfriend would comprehend consequences. He was also drowsily aware that somewhere along the line fervour had swamped reason. It wasn’t that he had staunched thought but that the piccolo of his notions had been drowned out by the thunderous philharmonic of his agony.
Now the piping piccolo broke through. It told him he had gone far enough. He could wade back and his message would still be heard. Choose life. And practicality hadn’t totally deserted him. He dimly recalled that his phone was in the soap dish. He clawed at it, gathering it into his mitt. Fingers pulped against the buttons as he sought his mother’s number. Then they transformed into sausages and the phone hit the water with a dull plop.
Randall flailed in very slow motion. Elbows scudded down enamel in feeble attempts to raise himself. Mustiness misted his mind, with a pure ray of panic slicing through like a laser in turbid smoke. Assailing waves of regret and defeat, the numb horror of helplessness. I tried to bail, to exit his head. But the shudder of me from the stereo rattled the windows, walloped the walls. It imprisoned me inside him. I endured the raw terror and the wailing worthlessness of Randall. The impenetrable loneliness.
Then lucky old Randall died.
While I was left, jangling. Stuck with his indelible last few seconds.
Insult to injury—they played me at the funeral.
How can I retain this? Why didn’t Randall’s last minutes die with him? Has the intensity of it left a scar? Or am I just piecing together what his friends and relatives know or believe about his demise?
Randall was the first. Humans love to listen to music as they rip the wrist, pop the pill, leave the ledge. They like something meaningful to expire to. I’m in the top-yourself top ten. I’ve been inside too many at that moment. That very moment. Not everybody regrets. Some feel brave; some feel release. Most are scared; a few feel peace. All are lonely. Full of gloom. Each one is different. Each one is human.
Nicole’s mum was over-reacting. Nicole wasn’t about to step in front of the approaching car. I know. She hadn’t done the planning. She hadn’t set out the right conditions, prepared the environment. And there were mysteries she wanted to uncover. She had a future, a calendar. Time was a beckoning, not a burden.
Mum herded Nicole into the passenger seat. They set off in the gravy light, Nicole twisted towards the door. Mum peered through the Jackson Pollock of insects developing on the windscreen. As she steered she fished a fragment of paper from her handbag. Nicole recognised the scorched edges of one of the pages she’d seen stuffed in there. She caught snatches of lyric in Terry’s familiar hand: the words “touched” and “hutch”, “legacy” and “leprosy”. The night nestled around them, trapping them together. Mum neglected to switch the heater on and Nicole trembled quietly as she listened to the cracked voice. It needed tuning.
The Ballad of Terry Leaving Home.
Chorus: Terry and Nicole banter about Bryce. Nicole reveals her affection for her boyfriend and Terry makes some jibes about accountants but regards his daughter fondly and says something schmaltzy about his Sunny Bunny growing up. (I remember this incident: there was a sluice of Zorn). She replies that Sunny Bunny was considering moving into a hutch with Bryce. Then perhaps they could do what rabbits do best (she was thinking about the daisy chain of destiny; of continuing the conga line of conception). Terry shifts uncomfortably, then drifts into the doldrums, castaway in contemplation.
As the car churned through the night I tried to interrupt. I did my utmost to link to the memory of Nicole searching for my sheet music in the box of Terry’s belongings and extracting the mood diary. I tried to alert her to that final entry: Bryce hutch SB so happy. SB for Sunny Bunny. Nicole ignored me, her mind fortified against extraneous content. A band concentrating on playing while the ship went down.
Verse 1: Terry digs out the old drawing of Mrs and Mr Nicole and family. It has always troubled him; that’s why he’s kept it. He ruminates and cogitates, wonders and worries. He prepares rancid concoctions, pouring them into his daughter. Snatches up his guitar and tries to turn misery into melody but his fretting makes him fumble on the frets. He voices his anxieties incessantly to Mum. Incessantly to Mum.
Return to chorus.
Verse 2: Mum disarms him with her usual irreverence, aggravating him. She listens to the mournful, bending notes of the song-in-progress winding from the oestrogen-free zone. Lines about leporine fertility and leprosy. She watches him mooning, forehead furrowed. Obsessively revisiting his fears like a tongue that can’t resist a decaying molar. One evening he finds himself stranded in the hall, the drawing in his hand, lost and afraid. Nicole bumps into him there, on her way to work. After she leaves he advances on Mum, stabbing a finger at the fat aeroplane with stunted wings that hangs over the gaudy family.
“What does that remind you of?”
“It’s an aeroplane.”
“It’s the Zeppelin. Even as a kid she was aware of the Zeppelin.” Words tumbling and tripping. Rapping, ad-libbing. “I wasn’t clear-headed that night, Rosie. I was sick when she was conceived. She’s infected.”
Repeat chorus times two.
Verse 3: Terry weeps. He claims he has soiled his daughter’s life and the lives of his grandchildren. He’s ruined any chance of Nic’s bliss with Bryce. Mum pulls him close. He spasms in her arms as he sobs. Something shifts inside Mum; some switch is thrown. She finds herself explaining why Nicole can’t be infected. The words bundle out of her; she’s surprised by their easy flow. As she subsides into silence, in a whirl of trepidation, she clearly remembers uttering a short laugh. Tension flees her shoulders; knots in her neck unwind. She’s airy as a lute. The medley of emotions make her giddy.
Terry is subdued and composed. There’s no big scene. He asks a few questions in a whispery undertone, then calmly gathers a few things and departs.
He leaves his aftershave behind.
Nicole flaked the charred edges of the fragment in her hand. She imagined Mum setting light to them, features sagging like wet clay. Then desperately trying to douse the flames. The drawing and the song simultaneously hated and loved. The image made her feel kindly towards her mother so she ejected it.
The stars were industrial diamonds, all glint but no gleam. Nicole became claustrophobic in the confined cabin. The idea that she was inhaling air expelled by her mother made her liverish.
“Who’s my father?” she asked.
“Terry. Your dad’s your father.”
“What’s the name of the man you fucked while you were cheating on Terry?”
It makes me uncomfortable when Nicole talks like this. In many ways, I’m quite the prude. Sure, pop tunes are all about sugar sugar, as the Archies said, but traditionally we like to proceed gingerly, employing suggestion, poesy and innuendo. I’m aware that some current hits are overly brash—I’m looking at you, gangsta rap—but I’m old school. Discreet, guarded. Coded.
Mum stared stonily ahead. Unusually still behind the wheel. They hit a satellite town shrugged off from the suburbs. Deserted stretches of pavement lit by sulphurous streetlamps, the lights of an empty hardware store crystalline and icy. The town appeared to be awaiting habitation. Nicole felt vacated too. She wanted the city, a profusion of l
ight, a press of traffic. Somewhere she could lose herself.
Mum reached out and laid a palm on Nicole’s stomach. Nicole fought the flinch.
“New beginnings.” Mum’s voice soft, seamed with sorrow. “We’ll look after both of you. No more secrets.”
As the hand flitted away, Nicole threw her arms around her abdomen. She smiled slyly, hugged and smug. During her recent GP visit, a pregnancy test had returned a negative result. When Dr Lewes theorised Nicole’s significant weight loss had postponed her period, she had ditched the diagnosis. Now she accepted it. It was good to own the final lie.
When they pulled into the driveway at home, Nicole burst from the car, gulping the unadulterated air. Mum carried the empty plastic brick in both hands as if it was full of lead then fought to find the lock with the key.
Nicole asked a final question. “When you cheated on Dad, did you play the song?”
If I could, I would have recoiled.
Mum never replied, but stepped inside.
Mum stepped inside, but never replied.
Nicole shambled in Mum’s wake, then broke for the bedroom. She lugged the pot plant back to the lounge. Grabbed the mood diary, music stand and sheet music (I imagined I felt myself crumple between her fingers. Silly of me. ) and replaced them in the oestrogen-free zone. She peered around Dad’s den—Terry’s den. It had undergone a subtle, unsettling image-change.
She retrieved the detective novel from her room and returned it to Terry’s chair in the lounge. She stared down at the closed book. Snatched it up again. It opened easily to the last words Terry had read. She tore the page free and stuffed it in her pocket, stranding the detective forever in his race across town. Never knowing if his daughter was morgue mince. She packed some clothes, called a cab. Gave the address of Bryce’s pad.
There, she rambled between rooms. Bryce hung back, giving her space, perplexed by the small suitcase he’d taken from her when she bundled through his door. That night she dozed off on the couch while watching infomercials in the early hours. Bryce covered her with a blanket before he left for work the next morning. Later that evening, as she contemplated a plate of mee goreng, he coaxed from her what had happened.