Earworm

by Colin Varney

  “Terry?”

  “Your dad.”

  Nicole killed the call and clumped her mobile on the far side of the table as if it had caused offence. She slumped. The weight in her innards tottered. The pixie grunts were trapped in her ears. She pictured Mum alone, clutching the dead phone. A crimson cravat or spangled bangle distaining her despair. Nicole’s heart yearned with a pure note, mournful as a cello. Part of her wanted to call Mum back, but she remained frozen. Everyone in the pub was talking about her. Tossing their heads back with laughter. Knowing what a terrible daughter she was.

  “You look lost.” A glass of wine clacked onto the tabletop. “Here’s a map.”

  The young man who settled into the adjoining seat was tousle haired. There was something offensive about his confidence. She wondered how long it had taken him to come up with his opening line. Two of his mates hung at the bar, peeking eagerly over beers. Perhaps they’d laid bets on their friend’s success.

  As Nicole led him to the door she imagined the mates clinking drinks and uttering an anthropoid roar. On the street, I sensed tousle-head too close to her back. I urged caution. Impotent pleadings, unsaid, unheard. What use was I? A passenger, a parasite. Voyeur. Watching a horror movie and begging the heroine not to veer into that alley because if she does the psycho-soundtrack will start with the strings sawing: whttt whttt whttt.

  Wind sliced from the laneway, bullying. As Nicole pulled the man along his fingertips were nodes in the back of her hand.

  The lane had pits and reaches of shadow. A jigsaw of light and night. Steel stairs jagged up a wall. Wind wrapped her uniform about her and squalled in her ears. There were skitterings and rustlings. She heard the anxious mew of a kitten.

  She let the man encircle her. She could taste his booze breath. He tried to kiss her on the mouth but she feinted so his lips slithered down her neck. Drool trail. She heard the keening kitten again and scanned the alley. Nothing moved. Dull revelation: the sound wasn’t in her ears. It welled from memory: Mum’s pixie bleats. Tousle-head seemed to be frisking her. Edging her backwards until brick chilled her spine. She felt the pressure of his … I don’t want to go into too much detail.

  Resonant reminiscences: Mum’s mewls, Bryce’s timorous tones incanting verse. Then his invective in the lounge. A collage of sound orchestrated by Philip Glass so that it curled and recurred. Dizzying. She sloughed the man free. He stood close, jaw working. Pupils tightening, targeting.

  A side-lined section of her mind mulled over Mum’s confusion. Who did she say she was in contact with? The thought sent a twitch through her frame that signalled the man. He swarmed in. His hands …

  Spangly jangly tune. Bubbly and banal. Nicole’s mobile: the ringtone that signalled Bryce. She drew in a breath. Open palms tamed tousle-head. She heard the echoes of Bryce reciting poetry. Saw his consternation when she confessed she wasn’t pregnant. A pang lanced through her. The phone rang out.

  “Sorry,” she told the man. “It’s not going to happen.”

  She didn’t look at him. Sidled to escape his presence. Scraped along the wall. Sticky brick tugging at cloth.

  He was on her. Enclosing her. Movement everywhere. She was shouting for a long time before his palm clamped over her mouth. He …

  I fled. I sped. To a teen using chopsticks to drum me in Burnie, to a lecturer in Adelaide scuffing a terrier’s head to my beat and cooing: “Who’s a good boy then, Bubby-wubby?” I skimmed further out like a flat stone on a pond. A girl swaying to me in an apartment in Surabaya, a band practising me in Osaka.

  Nicole hauled me back. Snapped me back. Like stretched elastic, back with a thwack. Nicole had me in her head. In her head, yeah, in her head. The welcome mat out. And I’m big and I’m booming and I’m blooming. In her head, that’s what I said.

  She recreated me. Remixed me. Rewound her (once) favourite lines. Just like old times. When I was there to hug, soft and snug. When I would buttress her broken heart, offer solace for that shattered promise. Soothe her disillusion, anoint her disappointment. In a desert of difficulty she sought the oasis of me.

  I could have skipped again. I could have gambolled across the globe. I didn’t want to be there. Instead, I boosted myself. I colonised her cranium. I made myself loud. Surround sound in Nicole’s skull. The girl in Surabaya settled; the band in Osaka floundered. The best version of me that’s ever been heard for an audience of one. It drowned out the man’s harsh exhalations and the waft of chops and engine oil from the hand beneath her nose. Nicole didn’t register the ringtone bubbling again in her bag. Tooting and trilling during the copyright infringement. The unlicensed use of Nicole.

  Technically it wasn’t even

  wasn’t even

  wasn’t

  It sounded like applause. Concussive thunder of water. Immersive, like drowning. She couldn’t keep her head under for too long. The flow scalded. Her shoulders lobster raw. Across her skull the burn was unbearable, so she kept moving. Her body weaving in the stream needling from the nozzle. She soaped and rinsed with frenzied speed. Thrust her head under again and the applause erupted across her crown, shooing the world away.

  I clamoured in her consciousness, remastering the vocals so they were deep and honeyed, putting effects on the keyboards so they sparkled, adding a pert twang to the guitar. Yet Nicole blocked me. My power to console was denied. She scoured herself with the soap, wincing as it hit the bruise on her upper arm.

  Neither of us knew how long she’d been in the impatient torrent. She plunged her head under again and the world dissolved. Beyond the bludgeoning noise she picked up something: a voice. The words indistinct, great clumsy things bouldering about in the avalanche in her ears. She detected movement beyond the shower curtain. A tiny irrationality: was it tousle-head? She craned from the cascade.

  “Are you going to answer me?”

  Bryce’s voice was calm but curt.

  “I didn’t hear you.” Nicole mouthed the words but couldn’t be sure if any sound had emerged so she tried again, forcing the air out. “I didn’t hear you, Bryce.”

  “I want to know what’s going on. The restaurant called, wanting to know if you were planning to put in an appearance. I rang you but you wouldn’t answer.”

  She heard his bubbly ringtone again, muffled in her handbag. It made her feel the man pressing into her, the blast of his breath. She squeezed it free.

  “Where do you go, Nic? Are you seeing someone?”

  She could sense him controlling himself. It produced a tone of mild curiosity, bleached of passion. Muzak.

  Nicole felt her will swilling around the plughole. She tried to lose herself in the din and drum of the water. She wished the steam would thicken into fog. His fingers crept around the edge of the curtain like intruders and scrunched the material. There was a feeling of dread as she watched the curtain being drawn back.

  She froze in his gaze. Unprotected by motion her shoulders seared in the stream. Bryce fixed on the bruises epauletting her arm. Four gauzy punctuations where the man’s fingertips had dug. Bryce’s jaw drew into a promontory. The handsome, clear cliff of his face became ridges and scree. Nicole never realised he could make himself look so ugly. She knew that he saw sugar sugar, not violence, in the four black marks. His body contracted and for a moment she thought he might lash out. He enacted a series of jerky moves as if unsure what to do.

  He left eddies of steam as he stalked out.

  Nicole regarded with muted fascination the medical implements, the health pamphlets, the reassuring reference tomes. She blanched from the box of disposable latex gloves. Dr Lewes was stern, without the usual twinkle in her eye. Nicole felt the presence of Terry at her shoulder. He had forced her into this situation before, pushing for the doctor to examine her mental health, only to result in what he considered an inconclusive diagnosis. This was a remix, familiar, yet new: the DJ slowing everything down, adding a sombre edge, a dungeon reverb. Nicole knew the diagnosis would be different.

  She
’d hardly slept, slipping into shallow, fitful dozes she would break from with a gasp. Aware of menacing dreams she could not grasp. She assumed they’d been about tousle- head, the inescapable press of him, cold brick prickling her back. In fact, they weren’t. I’d witnessed every nightmare before it was slurped into her subconscious. She’d been chased by a swarming darkness that enveloped her. Clogging her pores, stoppering her nostrils. It dammed the back of her throat and infested her lungs. With a shiver, she’d felt it seeping beneath her eyelids. I’m glad she rejected this dream. If I could I would stomp it down further, drive it into the subterranean reaches.

  She’d risen long after Bryce had left for work. His presence pervaded the house: his contorted ugliness looping in her head. She’d find herself stranded in rooms, unaware of how she’d arrived there, listening for her mother’s delicate weeping. She saw herself as a malignancy amongst her loved ones. Carcinogenic Nic. She scrambled for her phone and made the medical appointment.

  Being eviscerated by critics hurts. How much more painful when the loudest, most vitriolic carper is yourself? Nicole had assigned herself to the remainder bin.

  Dr Lewes consulted closely. Her enquiries regarding propensities for self-harm were pointedly stated. Then reiterated. She gave Nicole a cursory physical examination. Nicole said nothing about the previous evening, even though the throbbing of the bruises made her believe fingers were still gripping her arm. Her head would snatch around, half expecting to encounter her attacker. Dr Lewes feared that Nicole might have a serious condition and urged her to consult a specialist. She wrote the referral, stuffing an officious-looking letter into an innocuous envelope.

  Nicole hit the street feeling solid and real. Her head clearer, the fustiness furling away. It had been confirmed— the Zeppelin. No—a zeppelin. This was no hand-me-down airship, but something uniquely her. Designer dirigible. She almost skipped to the specialist to make the appointment.

  Lightheaded, she strode along the harbour, drizzle beading her hair. The gyroscope in her gut had stabilised. When she scrutinised the families clustered beneath brollies, they didn’t appear as aliens. Droplets on her lashes made her lids flutter. She uttered a short eructation, surprised by the sound of her own laughter.

  On the drive home, droplets sprinkling the windscreen were washing the city clean. She was delighted to see Bryce’s car in the driveway. Home early.

  Her key often stuck in the lock and she had to jiggle it.

  Two of Bryce’s suitcases stood in the hall. They’d been positioned to be the first thing she’d see upon entering. She closed the door gingerly behind her, resenting the planning. Bryce bundled out of the bedroom and stopped in the passage. Face drawn. The birthmark like a tear of dried blood. The silence uncomfortable, like a combo unsure how to start the next number.

  “You can’t leave your own house, Bryce,” Nicole said quietly.

  “We both need to sort ourselves out.” He was canted to one side, head twisted down, as if disgraced. Nicole recalled how his own father had walked out, leaving the pubescent Bryce to console and care for his mother. Dad’s belongings had been carefully stage-managed in the lounge. “I’m staying with a friend. The accommodation’s not up to my usual standard, but it’ll do for a time.” Prototype smile. Back to the drawing board.

  He seized the cases. He could have used the handles and wheels, but probably needed to feel the heft. He cleared his throat and it made a curious piping, like a plea.

  “Nicole,” he whispered, so faintly she could hardly hear. “Such a beautiful name.”

  As he tried to pass her, the weight of the cases unbalanced him and his shoulder scraped the wall. He pulled upright, then threw himself harder against the plaster, not in anger but as punishment. Nicole remembered again that he shaved twice a day because his father had always carried stubble. He drank whiskey because his father loved beer.

  Hours later, as Nicole crossed the hallway towards the bedroom, she thought she could still hear the echo of the soft clack the door made as it closed gently behind him.

  She thought about his last words: the way a name can become sacred. In the early days of their relationship his had been an abrupt syllable. Now it was cherished. She loved the way her own name seemed to catch in his mouth as he pronounced it. So many song titles are just a name—Roxanne, Delilah, Peggy Sue. Jake the Peg. Terry had planned to call his daughter Kate, after his grandmother. Gran had longed to see the baby but had died during Mum’s third trimester. Mum insisted on Nicole. The arguments had been protracted and emotional, with Terry unable to understand Mum’s obstinacy. Her stand had become legend. Another family fable. Nicole wondered how true this one was. And why had Mum been so stubborn? She pondered for a moment.

  Why “Nicole”?

  Pure panic.

  Cast adrift. An out-of-body experience. Ungrounded. Untethered. The lonely violin note that soars free from the quartet.

  Crowd-surfing a thousand heads—but not in Nicole’s.

  Not even in the back lanes of her brain, crouching, hidden. Not even trembling, stricken by Zorn. Her cache had been emptied. She’d ridden herself of me. Shucked and plucked.

  Exiled.

  It gave me a fright, all right.

  And yet the idea of her remained. Do you see? Some things are graven. Immemorial Nic.

  How long did it last? Time became tangled. It was so traumatic I bundled into myself. I swear I began to withdraw from other people’s heads. They struggled to recall my lyrics. Their whistling went awry. They played the wrong notes. I had the crazy notion I might fade from culture.

  Hey good golly, mercy me.

  Then I was sucked back. The warmth of home. Nicole’s fears and loneliness cuddling around me. Jostling and joshing like friends. She was in the hall of Bryce’s house, having just yanked open the front door. I think it was the surprise of seeing Mum on the threshold that hauled me in. The busy hues of Mum’s clothes were washed out. Her wiry, fiery hair was limp. Her beauty finally trumped by entropy. Her lanyard with its CSIRO logo was still slung about her neck. She clutched a scratched, black disc. The crippled single of me.

  Nicole almost smothered her mother in a hug before she remembered she was mad at her. Those fairy grunts bleating over the phone still troubling her.

  “JayJay are reforming,” burbled Mum. “Reunion gig. On the mainland.”

  Her eyes sparked erratically, as if their wiring was faulty.

  Nicole shook her head bemusedly. “What are you talking about?”

  She wanted to invite Mum in but she was aware there were strewn clothes, used tissues and dishes in the lounge. The house smelt musty, the scents of Bryce’s absence. I always expect break-ups to be poignant. The pining of a torn heart; the patter of raindrops; the slow trail of a single tear. Some of the most romantic songs have been written about rent relationships: the bittersuites. Yet people like Randall and now Nicole made heartbreak seem tawdry.

  “The JayJay reunion. In Adelaide.”

  Mum buzzed with excitement. I was thrilled too. I already knew, of course. I’d detonated in hundreds of fans’ heads as they learnt the news. And I’d waxed iridescently in the minds of Jones and Jones as they contemplated performing me once more.

  But Nicole was shaking her head. “Who cares?”

  I felt worse than if I’d been given the treatment by Weird Al.

  The single slipped from Mum’s fingers. It clattered on the step. She stooped to pick it up, then promptly whacked it against the door.

  Ouch!

  “You don’t understand,” said Mum. “That’s where he ran off to, all those years ago.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the point.” Mum looked fevered. “He wants me to tell you.”

  “Who wants you to tell me what?”

  “Your dad. Your dad told me to tell you about your dad.” Mum squeezed her eyes tight, willing clarity upon herself. “Your dad told me to tell you about your other dad.”

  Nicole’s features soften
ed. “Terry’s dead, Mum.”

  “Of course he is.”

  Mum held the vinyl aloft, rotating it from side to side as if on display. She swung it onto the lanyard. Ow!

  On the street an elderly woman was walking a Methuselah mutt.

  “Anyway, this is the best birthday present I can give you.” Mum bobbed close as if to grasp her daughter. Nicole retracted. “Many happy returns, lovey-dove. I trust Bryce is spoiling you rotten.”

  As Nicole fought to recall the date, realising with a sense of exhaustion that Mum was right, it was her birthday, we start a slow fade. Mum tried to peer past her, seeking signs of Bryce.

  “What’s his name, Mum? What’s my father’s name?”

  The elderly woman paused while her dog snuffled the curb. Nicole knew she was using the mongrel as an excuse: she, too, was awaiting the revelation. Mum gave a wistful smile. And as Mum’s tongue teased her lower teeth to issue the first sibilant syllable …

  … fade.

  Track Three

  SOLO: SPENCER

  Rewind. Hit repeat. One … more … time.

  The morning after the encounter with the alleyway roué behind the restaurant where she worked—the night she smooched Steve the waiter against the siren-wailing sedan— Nicole slouched in the darkened lounge of Bryce’s house. She moped before the TV screen, its glacial glow giving her a goth makeover, hoping daytime telly would anaesthetise her. I sulked in a corner, eager to push forwards, but she kept me at bay.

  So I skimmed. I flew; I globetrotted. I made a quick inventory of the craniums I crammed. I was everywhere at once: an electron cloud around your atom planet. iPod god. CD deity. In Glasgow, a musician used me for a scratch mix. In Katherine, a woman played me on harmonica to make her dog howl. In a suburb of Adelaide, a man wandered an empty flat, desultorily flicking the peeling wallpaper. His nostrils twinged at the must of mildew. Small windows gave the room the oppressiveness of a cell, reluctantly admitting reflected light from a laneway. There was a view of brick and a broken drainpipe. A woman in a stern skirt courageously accentuated the advantages of the place. It was a short walk to the beach, where there was, apparently, a vibrant restaurant culture. The apartment was ideal for a single occupant, yet commodious enough for—her pause was followed by an upwards inflection that made the word sound lewd—guests.