I took my violin home, then stood for what seemed forever outside Justin’s front gate. I sucked in my courage and knocked on the door. I was asking a lot of Justin. Asking him to compete with the love of my life. Asking him to steal me away from it. Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Was Hayley right? Could I just enjoy myself with Justin and push my looming decision to the back of my mind? Or was I dragging us both into a relationship with an expiry date?
I turned and sprinted away from his house. The front gate clicked open. I heard him calling after me, but I kept running. Maybe if I just kept sprinting away, past the mansion, past the caravan park, out into the street, I could run my way out of all the mess. Justin caught up with me somewhere between my parents’ house and the beach.
“Geez Abby,” he panted. “What the hell?’
I turned away from him. I tried to gulp down air, but the humidity stuck in my throat like cotton wool. I crumpled into a heap in the middle of the road. Justin sat beside me.
“What the hell?” he said again.
I hugged my knees.
“So you’re running away from me? That’s how you’re going to solve this?”
“I don’t know how to solve this,” I said finally, my voice tiny between gasps for air.
“Come on, Ab. I like you. You like me. Why does this have to be so fucked up?”
We were spotlit suddenly by the headlights of a banged up white Ute. I turned away so Justin couldn’t see my face. The driver honked loudly and drove around us, making a cloud of dust as the wheels skidded through the gravel.
This was the main road through town; the one that passed the caravan park, continued down to the beach and looped around the shops. A pot-holed circle of a road. I could stay on it forever and never see anything new.
“I’m going to the city,” I said. “Soon. I have to get out. I can’t stay here.”
I could feel Justin’s eyes on me. His breath, still fast and gulpy, was right next to my ear. I couldn’t look at him.
“You’re still on about all that,” he said. “Escaping and shit… You’ve been dreaming your life away since you were twelve.”
“I’m not spending my life in this dump!” I hissed. “It might be enough for you, but it’s not for me. Having this dream is the only way I can survive here!”
“Your real life’s that shit then, is it? That you can’t forget about leaving for two seconds?”
I swallowed hard. Justin put his hands on my knees and knelt in front of me.
“So maybe you’ll leave in a couple of years,” he said, his voice gentle again. “But you’re here now, Abby. Can’t you just deal with that? I’m here too you know.” He leant his forehead against mine. His breath was warm against my cheek, his smell hot and musky. He slid his hand under my ponytail and pulled me closer to him. I shook my head suddenly and pulled away.
“No,” I spluttered. “I can’t just deal with it. I’m going to the city. You’re not going to make me forget about that.”
Justin exhaled loudly. “I’m not asking you to forget about anything!” He stood up. “I can’t handle this messed up obsession of yours any more, Abby!” He started to walk away, leaving me curled up alone on the road. “Let me know when you’ve got a real fucking life.”
THIRTEEN
I saw every day of my life in Acacia Beach before I had even lived it. Every day was summer and the town seemed to warp in the heat and close in on itself, becoming smaller and smaller as the months trickled away. Sometimes I would pass Justin in the street, or in the hallway at school and we’d be strangers. Then our eyes would catch for a second and I could see his thoughts laid out; thoughts that I was wasting my life on a fantasy he was no longer a part of.
My only freedom was my jam sessions with Andrew, when we stayed in the basement for hours, refining our pieces as though music was the only thing in the world that mattered. Then I would rifle through his piano albums and demand he play for me. Sparkling Mozart sonatas, haunting Messiaen, dizzying Bartok. I insisted on the performances partly because it was my only chance to witness live music and partly to keep Andrew’s talent intact. I was painfully aware of how easily it could disappear on a diet of teaching students who pretended they’d practised, and girls who deliberately played with flat hands in the hope that he’d lift and curl them on the keys.
“I hate the amount of time you’re spending with him,” Sarah would say each time I crept home through the dark maze of caravans. “He puts bad ideas in your head.”
“Like what? Leaving this place? Doing more with my life than scrubbing camp ground toilets?” I never let her reply, disappearing upstairs and falling asleep to my Dvorak concerto.
“So Abs,” said Andrew one night as we walked up from the basement. “I’m driving down to Brisbane this weekend to hear a friend play bassoon with the state orchestra. Wanna come? They’re playing that Dvorak concerto you love.”
“Are you serious? I’d love to!”
“Great. I’m driving down Friday and staying with my brother in the city. You’re more than welcome.”
“You’re going all that way for a concert?”
“Sure. It’s my friend’s debut. Besides, I’m picking up someone from uni on the way that I haven’t seen for ages.”
Hayley looked up from the kitchen table where she was cutting up a bowl of spaghetti for Oliver. “Ex-girlfriend,” she mouthed.
“Is that why you’re not going?” I asked.
She laughed. “No! I’m not going cos of this one.” She ran her hand through Oliver’s wavy hair. “Besides, it’s not really my thing. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it much more than I would.”
“So are you going to do the deb ball this year?” asked Andrew as we drove down the highway. Every few years, Acacia Beach became a mess of champagne and chicken as the high school kids celebrated their adulthood with copious amounts of underage drinking.
“As much as I’d like to avoid it,” I said. “I think if I tried, Rachel would actually kill me. She’s been drawing pictures of her ideal dress for the last six months.”
Andrew laughed. “That feral red-haired kid has volunteered to play piano for the presentations. I’m having a great time trying to beat some musicality into him.”
“That guy plays piano?”
“Well, if you use the term playing loosely…”
I laughed. “Aren’t you supposed to support your students?”
Andrew flicked the radio dial as an irritating ad for roof tiles came on. “I do support them. Some are just so unmusical there’s nothing I can do. Anyway, that kid’s a massive nob. I spend half his lessons reminding him which one’s his right hand.”
I smiled. “Oh yeah? And what are you saying about me when I’m not around?”
“You know what I think about you, Abs.” He wound up his window. “Hey did you ever find out who gave you that violin?”
“It was probably my dad. When I asked him, he said he didn’t do it, but I figure that’s just because he was scared of what my mum would say.”
“That was really nice of him.”
“Yeah. Now if I could only get him to sign my audition form…” I sighed. At seventeen, I had all but given up on my parents. In just a year I could cut myself loose from them. Fly away and never come back.
“Have you got your learner’s yet?” asked Andrew.
“I’m still getting around to it.”
“Lazy thing. I was going to let you drive my car.”
“Sure you were.”
“I was!”
I crossed my legs. “I bet my mum would love that.”
Andrew smiled to himself. “Yeah well, your mum already hates my guts, so I figured-”
“She doesn’t hate you,” I said.
“Yes she does.”
I sighed. “She hates everyone. It’s not personal.” I knew it was. I knew Andrew knew it was too.
I had told my mother I was going on a school trip. “It’s very educational,” I said. “We’re going t
o study the historical buildings in Brisbane.”
I hoped Sarah would be too caught up in the trials of the caravan park to wonder why I was the only person from school who was going.
We picked up Andrew’s friend Lily in Townsville. She had long black dreadlocks tied back with a woven scarf and matching silver pins through her nose and eyebrow. Her dress was made from a tie-dyed petticoat with ribbons sewn along the hem. I thought she would probably like Michelle’s wheat-grass malarky.
Andrew and Lily talked about uni and laughed a lot.
“Hey Lil, remember that party when you puked in some guy’s hiking boot?”
“What about that choir concert we all turned up to tanked?”
Lily’s laugh was high-pitched and made her breathe the way my great-uncle had before he had died of emphysema. At the end of each fit of hysteria, she let out a long sigh and brushed Andrew’s arm. She looked over her shoulder at me.
“Sorry,” she giggled. “Don’t mean to leave you out. You’ll have some good stories too if you go to uni.” She flashed a mouthful of white teeth, which I decided looked too big for her face.
Andrew slept in the back so he could drive through the night and I sat in the front beside Lily. We drove for a while in a silence I barely noticed; my attention with the changing landscape as we snaked down the coast. Sugar fields and paddocks became knitted grey green bush. Gum trees made twisted silhouettes as the sun sunk into a pink sky. Lily flicked on the headlights and a giant bug exploded on the windscreen. Finally, she said:
“Pass me my water bottle, mate.”
I unscrewed the lid and handed it to her.
She took a mouthful. “Can’t wait to get back to the city.”
“I’ve never been,” I told her, then wished I hadn’t. She raised her eyebrows and the silver pin flickered like an electric spark.
“You’re kidding. You spent your whole life in that little hell hole?”
I got suddenly defensive, without having the faintest idea why. I had always been the biggest advocate of Acacia Beach’s hell hole-ish qualities. Thrived on gossip, smelled like fish, etcetera, etcetera.
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “We have a nice beach. Snorkelling and stuff… you know…”
“Great.” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or if it was just her usual bedside manner.
“Andrew likes it,” I said. “He chose to be there.”
Lily snorted. “Yeah well Andrew stopped thinking with his head some time ago.” She took another sip out of the bottle, then held it back to me to put the lid on.
“So you’re a muso?” she asked.
I wanted to say yes, but wasn’t sure if I qualified. “Kind of.”
“What do you play?”
“Violin.”
“Oh,” said Lily. “I didn’t know Andrew taught violin.”
“What about you?” I asked curiously.
“Flute.” Lily seemed to fit better at the front of some grunge band than playing the flute at a conservatorium. She turned to me. “So you serious about your music?”
“I want to go and study in the city,” I said. “Andrew says I’m good enough to get into the Conservatorium.”
Lily smiled wryly. “It’s a bitch you know; the Con.”
I frowned. “Why?”
She rested one arm on the door and steered the car with two fingers. “All that studying puts things into perspective. Makes you realise how impossible it is to actually get anywhere in the music industry. And how many wankers there are waiting to shut you down if you do.”
I looked out the window, picking edgily at the seam of my jeans. “Your friend got into the orchestra,” I said finally.
Lily smiled to herself. “And that’s such a rare occasion that we’re driving for twenty-four hours to go and bloody see it.”
When I woke up the next morning, the sun was low in the sky and the inside of the car was pleasantly cold. I pulled my jacket over my shoulders and looked out the window. Houses began to sprout amongst the brown paddocks as we passed through the outskirts of Rockhampton. A sign directing us to Brisbane rushed past the window before the endless paddocks returned. I stretched my legs across the back seat and closed my eyes again, listening to Andrew and Lily chatting quietly.
“How’s the little one?”
“Good. He’s four now.”
“I still can’t believe you’re wasting your twenties changing nappies. What happened to travelling the world? Doing your masters in Austria? You would have gotten in to Salzburg for sure.”
“Yeah well…” said Andrew.
Lily laughed a little. “Remember how we were going to go to Europe after uni and make every decision by tossing a coin?”
“There’s time for that.”
“Yeah right. Ever wish he hadn’t happened?”
“Not a day.”
I was glad. Lily’s water bottle crackled.
“Do you ever wonder how things would have turned out if we hadn’t gone to that shanty town for graduation?” she asked.
Andrew paused. “Sometimes,” he admitted.
“Me too,” said Lily. “You might be playing gigs in a real town. We might be in Paris together. Imagine that.”
“Lil…”
After a while, she spoke up again. “You can’t really be happy there. You’re just wasting your talent. Don’t you want to be back in the real world?”
I was scared Andrew might leave me for the real world. I was relieved when he said:
“I’m staying where I am.”
“But only cos you feel like you have to now. You’re not really happy there…”
“Lil… Abby doesn’t need to hear all this.”
“She’s asleep. Is that why you brought her along? So you had an excuse to not talk to me about things?”
“No,” said Andrew. “If I wanted to do that I would have brought Hayley.”
“Hayley, Hayley…”
I was glad when it was Lily’s turn to sleep in the back seat.
“So are you happy in Acacia Beach?” I pushed, hoping I would have more luck than Lily in extracting an answer.
“I knew you were awake.” Andrew felt around in the glove box for his sunglasses. “Yes Abby, I’m very happy.”
“What about your music? Are you happy even though you hardly get to play any more?”
Andrew didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Things change, Abs. Priorities change.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Depends.”
I wound my ponytail around my finger. “I think Lily’s still in love with you,” I said boldly.
Andrew smiled in amusement. “No she’s not. She’s just angry.”
“About what?” I asked. “Did you ditch her for Hayley?”
“No. Well… Kind of… You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m just learning the ways of the world.”
Andrew laughed. “Shut up and look out the window.”
Coming from a town with one supermarket, one pub and a servo on the edge of the highway we pretended belonged to us, Brisbane was a heaving, smoky beast I was afraid would swallow me whole. I was too nervous to walk more than three paces behind Andrew as we climbed off the train in the city centre, stepping on his heels until he turned and said:
“Hey Abs, how about a little personal space?”
Andrew and Lily marched across main roads, down alleys and over bridges towards the concert hall, without so much as pausing to check a street sign.
“Where are we?” I kept asking. “Do you know where you’re going?”
Andrew laughed. “Of course I do. I grew up here.”
I decided I’d probably die if I ever went to New York.
And then, Dvorak. Few things have had more of an effect on my life than hearing my concerto performed live. I floated out of the concert hall like I was whacked up on LSD, tripping more than once into an old lady with a faded blue rinse. Andrew grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the foyer.
/>
“The Dvorak was so brilliant,” I babbled. Lily reached into her purse and produced the cigarette she had been rolling during the concert. She slid it delicately between her teeth and flicked her silver lighter. I danced down the wide stone walkway, replaying every bar of the performance in my head.
“I want to be a performer,” I told them excitedly. “I have absolutely no doubt.” Lily’s cynicism had been lost two bars into the violin concerto. “I’m going to do a national tour first and play in all the capital cities, then I’ll go to Europe. Then maybe America.” I hopped in zigzags over the paving.
“How nice to not be old and jaded,” said Lily, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-six.
“Shut up Lil,” said Andrew. He stopped to pick up my hair claw as I jolted it off my head.
I said for the billionth time that the Dvorak was so brilliant. We walked along the riverbank. It was almost eleven, but the walkway was full of lantern markets and buskers. The dull thud of bongo drums drifted over the water. I was counting the number of ferries that shimmered by the docks when I realised Andrew was telling me about his bassoonist friend from the orchestra.
“Are lots of your uni friends performers now?” I asked, wondering how his version of events compared to Lily’s.
He shook his head. “It’s a tough industry to break into. Only the best of the best make it as performers.”
I wondered if I would ever be the best of the best, but was too afraid of the answer to ask.
“What do your other friends do?” I asked instead.
“Well…” Andrew walked along, playing with my hairclip. I wondered if he was reminiscing about uni. I sneaked a sideways glance at him. Maybe he was thinking about being in Paris with Lily. Or maybe just being back in Acacia Beach with Hayley and Oliver.
“Lots of them teach during the day and play gigs at night,” he said. “And a couple of my friends are composers.” He nudged me suddenly. “Hey, you know that ad with the singing fruit salad? My friend wrote the music for that.”
Music From Standing Waves Page 7