Earworm

by Colin Varney

  She took the sprig of lavender that was on the tray, placed it between her teeth and performed an impromptu flamenco, snapping her fingers above her head. Spencer laughed as he sucked coffee, then made room for her to sit alongside.

  “We didn’t have a rose, either,” she said apologetically, replacing the lavender next to the toast.

  “No matter,” he said.

  “No matter-dor.” She snuggled in. Sprog jumped onto the bed, almost upsetting the tray. “Spain, Spence. I’ve always wanted to go there. I’ve told Eva to withdraw the Eros nomination. We could go for six months. Maybe a year.”

  Bub stood alongside the bed, ogling Spencer plaintively. Spencer lowered his tones so the dogs couldn’t hear.

  “What’ll we do with the boys?”

  “Dad’ll look after them. He’ll spoil them rotten.”

  Spencer gave Bub a resigned look.

  “I could get study leave,” he said. “Maybe research a book.”

  Vivienne drew back from him in delight. “You should.”

  He was as astounded by his rush of avidity as she was. For a brief moment he felt a mist of blue wisping within him. He tilted close to Vivienne and hummed a Spanish air. As he did so the tune ballooned in his head, shunting me aside. It was my old nemesis, Bizet’s Habanera, with its catchy lilting verses and footstomping four-chord orchestral sting. We bristled against each other.

  Spencer believed Bethany had begun with Carmen. That afternoon when he’d wrested Vivienne from her writing, the opera had been streaming from the stereo. Bizet bizzo. He once told friends that Bethany had been conceived in Spain and on a few occasions during the pregnancy Spencer and Vivienne had laughingly referred to Bethany as their Barcelona baby. As he recalled this, I felt the impending threat of Zorn, and I was already under siege in his skull. But this is another thing I don’t understand: is family life so bland that humans have to make stuff up to enliven it? Bethany was conceived in a country the parents had never visited and Terry wore an invisible cloak. It’s baffling. True Love, on the other hand, comes with its own magic. Make it, don’t fake it.

  “Let’s crank the record player up.” Spencer struggled to leave the bed but the tray hampered him. “Let’s play Carmen.”

  “No, Spence.” Vivienne pushed him back against the pillow.

  “But you love that song.” He hummed the Habanera again. “Let’s put it on.”

  Vivienne shook her head emphatically. For a moment I felt pity for the ditty that was trying to muscle me out. I imagined how it must feel. It was once a favourite, strutting around within Vivienne much as I once did with Nicole. Now it was stowed in a cobwebbed corridor of consciousness. If it had a body I imagine it in the foetal position. I wished I could nudge up and give it a hug. But it’s a solitary life being a song, aware of others of my kind but unable to commune. And am I weeping for the Habanera binned by Vivienne, or for myself, nixed by Nicole?

  Sprog perked suddenly, head swivelling to the window. He set off a fusillade of yapping, springing from the bed and scrabbling at the windowsill. Bub set off down the hall with his hobbled run. They heard him barking at the front door, desperate to get out.

  “What’s going on?” asked Spencer. “Hey, fellas!”

  Vivienne crossed to the window. She drew back, startled. “There’s a girl in the front yard.”

  “What?”

  “A girl. She was peeking through the window, Spence. Now she’s heading for the street. Getting into a car.” Vivienne turned back into the bedroom. “That’s the weirdest thing.”

  “The morning after a night on the breezers,” said Spencer. He was still far away, lost in a world of bullfighters and gypsies. Reliving the afternoon that might have made Bethany. He patted the mattress for Vivienne to rejoin him. “Viv,” he said softly. “It’s Bethany’s birthday. Let’s do something. Together.”

  He’d become accustomed to eulogising his daughter alone. It was only when he’d seen Marla’s dismayed reaction to this that it occurred to him how pitiable it was. After the embarrassment of their harried smooch in Marla’s lounge, they’d sat drinking coffee. The spirits of Griff and Vivienne had flitted about them, but as the whiz of the wine subsided they’d become remarkably at ease with each other. He’d told her of the birthdays when he’d stood by himself on the bay where they’d scattered Bethany’s ashes. It had rained the first year and he’d been angry with the weather again for being so apposite. Then he’d trawled the toyshops, looking for the perfect doll. On her second birthday he’d come home with Sprog and then, a year later, Bub. When he’d told Marla what he’d done for the previous year’s birthday, and the indigestion it had induced, she’d made a croak that was half incredulity, half hilarity.

  “I might do the same this year. I’ve still got the contact details for the clown.” He surprised himself by taking her hand. “Would you come with me? Only … it’s better not to be alone.”

  She’d only hesitated a moment before nodding. “Nothing I like better than a date at McDonald’s.”

  But if Vivienne agreed now he’d make it clear to Marla they should never meet again outside of lectures and tutorials. He’d forget McDonald’s and cancel the booking for the clown. He’d go wherever Vivienne wanted to commemorate their daughter’s birthday.

  Vivienne smiled sorrowfully. She returned to the bed and sat next to Spencer, running a hand around the nape of his neck. She tried to say something but it stuck in her throat. She shook her head.

  Jump back! Earlier that morning, Nicole sat in the stippled shade of a parched shrub, appraising the cream brick abode opposite. Heeding the needling wheedle of insects dive-bombing her ears. The street that had seemed so malevolent the previous night was peaceful, embroidered with bird chirps. She was enjoying the coolness raising the tiny hairs along her forearms, but the morning already carried the threat of warmth.

  The house was extensive, with a wide overgrown frontage. She supposed Spencer must have a large family. Or perhaps the kids had already grown and left the nest. I yearned to tell her the truth, but even if I could give voice she’d block her ears. The yard had a sense of order, with symmetrically placed flowerbeds and bushes, but was infested with weeds. The grass needed a mow. Somebody had carefully planned and nurtured the garden, then forsaken it. She looked for dropped and forgotten toys or abandoned bikes and found none.

  Trepidation gurgled low in her gut. She felt a key was about to turn, a portal to open. She’d been groping around a hall of mirrors for so long, but was about to confront the one glass that didn’t distort. She’d had a similar feeling that evening when the name had tumbled from Mum’s lips. She could see Rosemary now, standing on the porch holding up a wrecked record latticed with scours and scars. Ouch! Mum’s voice lowered as she revealed how Terry communicated with her via vinyl. Her pupils flicked uncertainly, expecting Nicole to laugh perhaps, to ridicule her afterlifeline. But Nicole hadn’t the heart. She saw how difficult it was for Mum to spill the name and she could still hear the muted misery that had leaked from the phone when she’d called her from the Vic, the tinny transmission giving the halting hiccups a crackling fragility. Besides, there was something else in Mum’s eyes. A hint of hesitancy: a contaminated conviction. Like when you see a cookin’ combo but can spot the session musician, the one who’s going through the motions. The impurity in the performance. Nicole could see her mother, the CSIRO research administrator, clutching at credulity. She didn’t diffuse her Mum’s enthusiasm. Choke her hope.

  “I’m too soft,” she muttered to herself as she crouched beneath the bush.

  She peered hard at the house, trying to X-ray the curtains, the walls. Hoping to discover something about the stranger inside. Spencer Nicholson. The surname negotiating her mother’s lips: the spiky beginning followed by the hush at the end. Mum on the porch, never invited inside, describing the arguments that preceded her daughter’s christening. Terry weeping over his recently deceased grandmother and unable to understand why his daughter could no
t carry her name. Mum grappling with guilt but needing the connection between procreator and creation. Nicole. It was a homage.

  Or what we in the music biz call a rip off.

  Nicole felt the stickiness beginning on her arms. She swatted another mosquito, transforming it into a hieroglyph. A leg jigged with impatience. She’d sat out the drowsy dawn, watching the sun bloat above the rooftops, preparing to bully. Was it too early to go visiting?

  She crossed the road and leapt the fence into the yard. She strode up to the door and raised her fist. Then froze. Aspic Nic. She imagined herself knocking, followed by an interminable wait. Perhaps she would hear the flop of footfalls approaching from within before the door swung open to reveal … what? What would she say to him? She had prepared nothing. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t have a plan, but that her plans changed minute by minute. Should she just bumble up to him babbling about who she was? Or try to discover something about him first? And what would she find out about herself? After weeks of temerity, she quavered, like a starstruck fan too timid to approach her idol.

  She took a few steps back, casting a longing glance over her shoulder at the car. She could just get in and drive away. Easy escape. Then she noticed the drapes across the front windows had been opened. She sidled across the lawn, edged into a flowerbed. She didn’t feel like a trespasser: she was entitled to be there, the secret sharer of Spencer Nicholson’s life. She inclined her body so she could peek past the window ledge, straining to penetrate the dim within. Eyes yearning from their sockets.

  It wasn’t until she made out the woman on the bed that she felt like a voyeur. The woman’s hair was twisty and thistled: the carelessness you allow yourself in private. Nicole couldn’t catch the finer detail of her features, but she had a sense of strength and oxidised beauty. The woman was turned towards a man in the bed, looming over him. Nicole ached to see, but he was obscured by the woman’s hunch and gloom gravitated around him. Her exasperation recalled the dissatisfaction she’d experienced when she’d trawled the university website and a thumbnail of Spencer had popped up. Then, he’d been angled away, moping like an emo. Eyes disguised by jutting brow. Lips set in a petulant rut. Camera shy guy. He had a handsomeness defocused by age. Yet, when I compared the photo to the way he sees himself when he braves the mirror, he seemed younger. Less haggard: more like he appears in Marla’s head. Was it an old snap? Nicole had tried to exhume herself from the sweep of his cheek or the draw of his jaw, but the fugitive tilt of his head and the grim lips had disguised him. Then, as now, she’d wondered what this man was like. Had he travelled? How many acrimonies and alimonies? How many children?

  Part of the bed came alive. It rose and detached itself, leaping onto the floor. With a bolt of terror Nicole realised it was a dog. She stepped back as its snapping maw reared beyond the glass. At the same time she saw Spencer glance up and something about the gleam of his eyes shocked her. Had she seen something familiar? Everything too fast. She retreated a few more steps, hearing a second dog yapping behind the door. The sound painful and persistent as a jammed CD. Now the woman’s face was in the window. Too close. They recoiled from each other.

  Perspiration beaded her back as she broke for the car.

  Everything about the fast food restaurant made Spencer feel out of place. He couldn’t classify the smell: obtuse but invasive and somehow false, as if someone had synthesised food odours. The plastic bench tenderised his tush and the rowdiness offended him. He sat up straight to demonstrate that he didn’t belong there, ignoring the milkshake in front of him. Marla was more at home, burrowing into a burger. He watched sauce with the viscosity of bile drip from the burger’s paper swaddling. He’d tried one the year before but found its taste bore the same relation to a hamburger that a James Last recording bore to the original song.

  A few tables away, Chloe the Clown produced a spray of paper flowers from behind the back of a small boy. Her bow tie spun in amazement at her own dexterity. Spencer drank in the boy’s bedazzlement and the wonder flushing the faces of his sisters as they crowded alongside him. Chloe sniffed at a plastic carnation on her lapel and it squirted water into her eye. She bobbed down, tugging her lapel from her collarbone for one of the sisters to sniff. The child shrunk away, squealing—but the flower now squirted backwards, catching poor Chloe again. The clown was dumbfounded that her ruse had, literally, backfired. The children ganged together, giggling.

  The children’s father was puzzled. He alternated between enjoying his charges’ enchantment and casting bemused glances at the other diners. He’d probably assumed that Chloe belonged to the family of the first table she’d performed at. Spencer guessed that he was now pondering whether the clown came with the restaurant. She certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the prude-postured man and bewigged woman sitting by the window. Chloe stretched latex in preparation for balloon animals, but the rubber kept pinging from her grip. She flapped with frustration.

  “This is cool,” said Marla, creme de pus streaking her chin.

  “She’s great,” said Spencer.

  “Is she the same one you used last year?” Marla asked.

  Spencer nodded.

  He imagined a little girl hanging back from the table where the children chortled. She was a hazy figure, her outline constantly morphing: straight locks kinking into Shirley Temple tresses; chubby features slimming to leanness. Sometimes she appeared as an oversized baby. Her colour-splashed party dress stayed constant. She smiled at Spencer, her expression benevolent as she shared her clown with others. Deep down he suspected this was unrealistic in an eight-year-old, but he didn’t care. His daughter was different. She wasn’t even bothered that she’d seen most of the tricks the year before. She was wise beyond her years, puckering her brooding brow. Spencer ceded to self-indulgence, settling more easily onto the unforgiving bench.

  On her seventh birthday, he’d tried to determine where Bethany would have most wanted to celebrate. He came to the conclusion that his daughter would beg him to take her somewhere he’d hate. “Oh, Dad. Please, Dad. Can we go there?” He’d found himself heaving a long-suffering sigh. It didn’t take long to hit on the kind of thing that would delight her and discomfort him. He’d located the nearest McDonald’s. As soon as he’d stepped through the door he’d felt like an impostor. Booking Chloe seemed like the next obvious step. Party down, clown.

  He turned to Marla, his face foolish and fond. He was grateful he wasn’t alone, but could still see Vivienne flamenco dancing in his bedroom that morning. Before she’d taken his breakfast tray away she’d bent close. “The book will be done soon.” Her voice had a raw edge, as if she was talking dirty, and he realised they were both anticipating the end of Writing Season. He took a long pull on the milkshake and the sweetness exploding in his mouth made him lightheaded. I saw a mash-up of emotions: mournful joy ramming into remorse; lovesickness having a head-on with heedlessness. The Habanera wavering at the back of his mind.

  “Thanks for coming, Marla,” he managed to mumble.

  She wriggled up alongside. He felt the fire of her along his flank. He recalled the way they’d crushed together in her lounge. She brushed her lips against his cheek. He detected her saltiness beneath her piquantly beefy breath. He met her eyes and knew he was flashing sugar sugar. He closed the small gap, pulping his mouth into hers. He was aware of the ghostly girl across the room goggling, appalled, but his shame was softened by a sense of displacement. He didn’t feel real in the restaurant. This was takeaway lust: cheap and disposable.

  While their lips were still locked his eyes opened. A small crowd milled beyond the window, just to one side of the playground. Standing behind them, intermittently obscured by their hustling hesitations, was a figure fixing him with an intense stare. Recognition rattled him and he pulled free of Marla.

  “What?” she said. “What is it?”

  Unreality made his head swim. He felt he was in a dream, although I could have assured him he wasn’t. He was staring at a
figure that had stepped from memory. Behind the screen of bodies, flickering in and out of view like vintage footage, was Rosemary. Uncertain as a sighting of Elvis. Her young features were marred by an accusatory glare. Part of Spencer’s mind was trying to get his attention, yelling at him that Rosemary wouldn’t look this youthful. He ignored it. There was Rosemary in the flesh and he ached with longing. All of the ardour he’d directed onto Marla transferred to her. He was overwhelmed with ooh la la.

  He shot to his feet, the abrupt movement making him dizzy. He stumbled to keep himself upright.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Marla.

  The figure turned and hurried away. Spencer was so unsteady he couldn’t leave his spot. And there was something about dramatically racing from the restaurant that he found undignified. He was already doubting what he’d seen. The figure was in the distance now and indistinct. She could have been anybody. He slumped back onto the bench and took a pull of the milkshake. He instantly regretted it.

  “Thought I recognised someone,” he squeaked meekly.

  When Vivienne startled her at the bedroom window Nicole fled in the hire car. Blood seething, she sought a coffee shop where she sipped a milquetoast macchiato and tried to decide what to do. She could wait out the weekend before cornering Spencer on campus. Or she could pound on his front door, proclaiming his paternity. She was too impatient to consider the first and too intimidated by the second. So she drove back to Spencer’s place, parking further away, hoping she couldn’t be spotted from inside the house. She left the engine idling for a while, half expecting them to storm out after her. She mused over the cream brick abode. How was it decorated within, she wondered. What books crammed the shelf? Was that a squash racket leaning against the wall, or an oboe?

  She sank into reverie, half asleep. Dim daydreams drifted past me. She was roused by a blue Camry backing out of Spencer’s driveway. As it swung onto the road she caught a glimpse of his profile behind the wheel.