by Colin Varney
She played my injury several more times. Ow! Ow! Ow! It was sadistic, but every time she heard that abrupt “…ty” she felt Terry’s presence thicken. From wisp to mist to miasma.
She seized the single, studied it for a moment, then Frisbeed it across the dressing table. It scattered some vials of scent. When she played me I hopscotched painfully over an instrumental section and crashed the opening of the third verse into the end of the following line. But no matter how many times she listened to this lyric-ectomy she could find nothing edifying. Meanwhile, I was becoming a stuttering wreck. Nicked and notched.
She threw me into the lamp. I clattered onto the edge of the bedside table. This time she was pleased with the results. At the end of the first verse Johnny now chanted: “… osemary … osemary … osemary …” Even the click that accompanied each iteration sounded like an aural tick of approval. She felt Terry reaching for her, using every means he could to caw her name. She sat on the bed, letting the needle scour repeatedly in that groove. 45 RPM ( Rosemarys Per Minute). I felt myself becoming psychotic. As the blunt needle smashed into that defect over and again, it gouged more molecules of vinyl free until the deeper rut threw the stylus further back every so often.
“… osemary … osemary … sweet Rosemary … osemary … sweet Rosemary …”
Rosemary folded and hooped for breath between sobs between sobs between sobs.
In the evening after the funeral she retreated to her room. Exhausted: wrung and undone. There was a gnawing inside her, like starvation. Her need for Terry. Her gaze settled on the record resting on the turntable. She picked it up and I braced for more beatings. Before she let fly, she spoke.
“Did you do it on purpose?” she enquired of the cornices.
The disc flying-saucered and dived into a chair. She jammed it back onto the turntable and listened carefully to my vandalised verses. Unable to find an answer, she asked the question again and pitched the record. This procedure was enacted two more times with Rosemary straining for a response. She was beginning to think the question was too fraught to expect an answer when I reached one of my favourite lines.
You know the one.
“Tender heart, steal soul …” click “… eal soul …” click “… eal soul …”
Rosemary’s features fell. A gush of guilt jellied her legs. She slumped heavily onto the bed. If Terry was emphasising his “ill soul” then he must be confirming that his death had been no accident.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” she blathered.
Imitating me.
In the ensuing weeks, Rosemary took comfort in my scrapes and scars. She surrendered to my excisions and obsessive-compulsive mantras while coddling her love of Terry love of Terry love of Terry. I was sounding positively avant-garde. In order to console myself I tried to sympathise with my B-side, which must also be sustaining damage. But as this was never played (the B-side’s lament) the injuries weren’t manifested. I suffered alone. Yet when I sensed the cockeyed cocktail of grief and relief that stirred within Rosemary as she listened, occasionally nudging the needle from a trench, I considered myself a martyr. Harm balm.
One night, Rosemary woke from fretful slumber, wondering why she’d been dreaming of Adelaide. Something about a band; a reunion. Lights burnt in the hall and she could hear a radio blaring in the kitchen. Now that she lived alone there seemed no need to turn things off. She dully wondered why everybody left her. In the darkness, she could see the squat bulk of the stereo. It was partly the single’s fault—my fault—that Nicole had gone. When she’d asked where Terry wanted his ashes scattered the needle had jammed at a place where two unconnected syllables crashed: “rrr … tuh … rrr … tuh”. Rosemary had craned in, face crimped in concentration, yearning for meaning. Sometimes it had sounded like “root”. At other times: “rote”. She’d realised both words were meant. Terry wanted her to leave his remains on the “route” where he “wrote”. So she and Nicole had taken the ashes to the highway where Terry had graffitied his love for Rosemary all those decades ago, and Nicole had heard the gospel. Pa deposed.
She heard again Nicole’s enraged entreaty: “Who is he? Who’s my father?”
The stereo loomed. Rosemary found herself setting the needle on the hatched, scratched vinyl. The cicatrix mix. I despaired at my stammering and inchoate condition, but loved the way her muscles relaxed and her mind eased as she listened. Stockholm Syndrome. She shoved the needle whenever she became peeved at a repetition. She was about to do so again when she paused, abruptly captivated by the non-words lodging in her ears.
“… til … hur … til … hur … til … hur …”
She saw him. The man in the newspaper office, in Adelaide, shirtsleeves rolled, hammering away at a computer. Young and wiry with a surfer’s tan and an expression of fierce determination.
“… til … hur … til … hur …”
“Yes.” Rosemary nodded at the record. “Yes, I’ll tell her.”
His name was Spencer.
Lily’s PhD was entitled Who Writes the Songs: Mondegreens and the Simultaneity of Meaning. It is inspired—and indeed structured—around me. I’m responsible for piquing her interest in the subject. Near my conclusion, she’d always been affected by Johnny wailing: “Lover’s gone, lover’s gone.” She was touched by the narrator’s pain at losing his paramour and often pondered whether it was death or another man that had taken Rosemary away. Then one day she read the lyrics and saw the line was: “Love has gone, love has gone.”
Now it was possible that the lover has remained. Perhaps Rosemary and my narrator are still physically together— perhaps even married, surrounded by family—but their ardour has iced over. The singer is yearning back to the times when their need for each other flared and phosphoresced. It’s the passion, not the person, that has vanished. The narrator longs for the fairground lights to flicker on again—for the breathtaking rides to resume and the smell of fairy floss and ozone to infuse the air.
Lily was thrilled by the way my meaning teetered. Has Rosemary died? Run into another’s arms? Or is she in the next room, glued to the telly or helping the kids with their homework? Has love gone, but the lover remained?
Has Love become a Relationship?
Spencer leant in. Tendons tautened in his neck as his chin lifted. Lips a-tremble, primed to purse. The heat of Marla’s lounge condensed around him. The taint of turpentine was heady in the air. Marla had slung away as she boogied to my metal mayhem and was on the point of slicing back. Spencer recognised the intensity of the instant. It was the moment after the conductor peremptorily raps his baton and raises it and the musicians are poised and the audience holds its breath. A myriad of performances exist in that hush: from the most overwhelming invocation of technique and emotion to a by-the-numbers trudge to an uncoordinated cacophony. Fecund second. This is perhaps the best part of any concert, when everything exists, before the first struck note charts a course that corrals the possibilities. Maybe this is the moment that people attend concerts for? Endowed now. Anything can happen, man—kismet doesn’t have a plan.
Terry spoke of his compositions’ “good twins”, the cloudy concepts that exist before he jots his first ideas. I wonder if I once had one—a superior sibling—and only one of us survived the birth, like Elvis and his brother. In art, unlike nature, it’s the runt that prospers. Thoughts like this have been niggling me lately. Ever since Johnny and Morris got together to discuss the reunion. Morris is impatient with me these days. While preparing the set-list he mischievously suggested they drop me. He’s proud of me, I know, but he feels my popularity overshadows other songs he believes are better. Well, vox populi, Morris: the people have spoken. The crowd would rebel if you didn’t feature me. And no, you can’t bury me in a medley of tired old clunkers—the people will demand the full rendition. Johnny, on the other hand, adores me, though he often wonders if I could have been better. He’s tormented by my detractors. Would they have carped so lustily if he’d changed a lyric
here or insisted on a grace note there? He wanted to schedule me late in the show so that expectations built, whereas Morris wanted me early. Done and dusted so the audience could lavish their full attention on the “underrated” songs.
So Spencer was caught in that blink before Marla’s head swivelled back to encounter his pout. Hazy images of what might come next strobed before him. Marla flinching or Marla clinching? On the lam or wig-wam-bam? Deceit or divorce? He envisaged a remake of that long-ago night when Terry returned unexpectedly to the untidy unit, recast with Griff as Terry and Marla as Rosemary. He imagined Marla with a baby bump. As these possibilities paraded he realised this was the most thrilling moment of any relationship he could have with her. This was the part that made his blood surge. Anything can happen, man—the scene is not yet in the can. If only he could freeze-frame: but his fingers had sprung apart and the ball bearing was already bouncing off the carpet.
He drew back.
Marla’s head whipped towards him with the unstoppable momentum of her dancing. Spencer was cringing now, trepidation etched into his features. He saw her expression lost in the mania of movement: eyes clenched, lips unclipped. The asterisks buried by ecstasy. Then her eyes sprang open and before he could be startled by their igniting intent, her mouth smothered his.
Marla ruined everything.
And Spencer responded. Yo, mama yo—let’s go, let’s GO. He pressed his lips into hers, flushed with fear and fever. Yeah. I said yeah yeah! He clutched at her and her arms snaked around him, yanking him close. As their mouths mashed he met the immobile stares of Griff’s children from several picture frames. Now her hands were under his shirt and his lips slurped along her neck. She must have felt his little red rooster becoming a big red rooster. Her breath hawked in his ear.
I crashed into 4’ 33”.
Marla pulled away.
They faced each other, panting. Her head tilted, as if listening. She was turned to the bookshelf, inclining towards the photograph of Griff poised at the drum kit. Spencer imagined it animating: Griff brushing soft licks on the hi-hat. A sibilant shuffle filling the room.
“I’m not ready,” Marla hissed.
Spencer felt everything go into rewind. The ball bearing lifting from the carpet and levitating into his fist. Possibilities clicking back into place. Freeze frame.
“Of course.” Spencer cleared his throat raggedly. “I’ll grant you an extension.”
Laughter jagged and fragile, riding on their heaving breaths.
Spencer’s attention snagged on the frozen faces of the children. They seemed to be listening too. Next door’s clock. Tock-tock. Tock-tock.
She lay in the back of the rented car, legs drawn up so her knees dented the rear of the passenger seat. She was certain she hadn’t slept, but every so often she would stir as if from a trance and notice the bracket of moon had leapfrogged across the night. The cabin sweltered. Swarm of warm. It seemed depleted of oxygen, forcing her to breathe in irregular time signatures. Sweat, sweetie, sweat. She’d tried cracking the windows open but that only invited bugs so she’d sealed them again. Mosquitos zinged.
Spencer’s house was across the road. It reared gothic in her imagination, alluring and forbidding as a haunted mansion. Her head was heavy but spurts of optimism blared intermittently like horn stabs. Terry’s theory of twins recurred. This was a city where nobody knew her, so there was a chance she could become the good twin, abandoning her evil counterpart in Hobart. She could reinvent.
She could give Nic the flick.
The possibilities reeled around Nicole like the circling bugs. What style of ensemble was she? Folk? Funk? Skiffle? Notation swirled and refused to settle on the staves. She needed the man in the house across the street to help her narrow the options and set her on course. Spencer could produce a demo for her to work on, to help her become the good twin. A buried notion clamoured for attention, telling her she’d misinterpreted Terry. The good twin was the idea, the ideal. The fertile fog. She was the good twin now, before she knocked on Spencer’s door. And there was something else—something Andy had said at Terry’s funeral—but she failed to grasp it. The battering thoughts made her dizzy. The gothic pile in her mind swelled, fattened by shadows, subfusc and supernatural. Battling vertigo, she fumbled with the door handle and lumbered onto the pavement.
The air outside was motionless and only mildly cooler. The street was extraterrestrial. She felt encased in her clothes, basting in sweat. Cook, baby, cook. Hobart had been chilly when she’d left and she’d slipped on sloppy jeans and a shapeless sack. The long sleeves suckered her arms. Hauling them up made her pores sigh, tinging like finger-cymbals.
Nicole had arrived at Adelaide airport late Saturday afternoon, hoping her credit card could sustain the hire of a vehicle. As she’d breached the barrier from the air-conditioned interior to the car park, she’d reeled as heat moulded itself around her. She’d bundled her small holdall into the boot. It contained a clutch of hastily snatched clothes, none of them suitable for the sultry conditions. Dusk settled as she drove, the failing day making already alien streets impermanent and unfixed. She knew the address of her destination, but wasn’t entirely sure of the way. The city sprawled away on all sides, huge and unmanageable. There was a rusty taste in her mouth. Her nose dripped and her eyes itched. She longed for Hobart’s fresh breezes.
There were few pedestrians, but she found herself investigating the faces of anybody her own age, looking for a hint of herself. Was it possible she had half-siblings in this city? His children? She replayed the moment his name had spilled from Mum’s lips. It had sounded somehow exotic, like the title of a chanson by Serge Gainsbourg, its sibilance hissing like a whispered confidence.
Spencer.
When Mum informed her that he had abandoned Hobart for media opportunities in South Australia, Nicole’s spirits had risen. Even if he hadn’t remained in Adelaide, as a journalist he probably had a web presence. As expected, when she’d fired up the computer she’d located him easily, but was surprised to find he wasn’t a reporter any more, but a tutor and lecturer. She’d imagined herself combing the campus. Perhaps infiltrating a lecture to catch the timbre of his voice and study the way he held himself. Would he pace as he spoke? Then a quick search in the online White Pages uncovered his home address.
Night had descended by the time she swung into his street. Darkness made his house inscrutable: perhaps it might yield secrets in daylight. The drawn curtains forbade her. It seemed rude to go barging in now and, besides, her head was wadded with weariness. Better to make the approach when she was alert. It was easy to find excuses not to knock. She’d surrendered to the back seat.
Now, as she ambled along the pavement, dance beats and yowls reverberated from afar. The distant moan of traffic sounded like something slowly dying. A sinister susurration alerted her to an old woman in a dressing gown hosing her lawn. Nicole’s legs gave beneath her and she sat heavily. Too tired. The pavement radiated warmth into her haunches. No relief, no escape. She whimpered.
A tight knot of teenage boys turned a corner and bore down on her, rowdy with jokes and jostling. They fell silent as they passed, heads swivelling to scrutinise. She smelt their musk and her stomach heaved. The fingerprint bruises on her arm throbbed.
Loneliness overwhelmed her. She felt sealed off from family and friends. Hermetic Nic. All the things she’d lost plummeted around her: Bryce, her job, her studies. Mum. In desperation she struggled to hold onto something.
Anything.
She sang me under her breath. No, it was less than that: lacking the strength to expel wind, she expressed me via the barely perceptible plip of lip and plap of tongue. But I fumed in her head, my brume billowing. It was a homecoming. I overflowed with gratitude. Wished I had a throat so I could choke back emotion. Sometimes it hurts being unable to sob.
She cuffed away snot and straightened her spine. Steeling herself, she ejected me. I scrabbled and squirrelled myself away in a grotto of grey matter. Sku
lking and humiliated. Used.
The old woman brandished the hose as if warding her off. Nicole hauled herself to her feet. As she folded herself back into the rear of the hire car, she thought of Terry again. He would have wanted to protect her from the predatory weather, but the most he could have done was provide imaginary insulation via an invisible cloak.
“He was a mad fucker,” she murmured to herself.
And there’s Andy, at the funeral. I can only just access the memory. “He thought the Good Twin felt the pain of the Evil Twin. He never realised it was a two-way street. The Evil Twin continues to draw power and sustenance from its sibling.” Andy sank briefly into contemplation. “It’s kind of parasitic.”
Her fingers curled around her phone. She flicked to a photo of Bryce. His smile gleamed from the screen. A mozzie strafed her and she batted at it crazily.
The smell of coffee disinterred Spencer from nightmare. Bethany had been trapped in his Camry, screeching, but he couldn’t locate her in a labyrinthine car park. He’d cried her name until his throat flayed. When he found her he saw she had a cake with lighted candles on her lap. He watched in horror as the tiny flames extinguished in the dwindling oxygen of the enclosed car. He fought with the door handle. Where had he left his keys?
He woke with relief, blinking in the morning light. Bethany’s birthday was upon him.
Vivienne was carrying a rattling tray. He struggled to a sitting position and she placed it on his lap.
“Breakfast, cubby.”
I fossicked in the memory vault for “cubby”. Pet name: short for “cub reporter”. Not the best, but any scintilla of schmaltz was encouraging.
Vivienne opened the curtains and Spencer grimaced against the glare. He regarded the slices of toast quizzically. What had prompted this treat?
“The Spanish have a light breakfast of rolls or toast, often with peach jam,” said Vivienne. “I looked it up on the net. We didn’t have peach; only apricot.”