Relief

by Anna Taylor

  Inside, Daisy is watching cartoons. Lola has given her an extra packet of chippies, to keep her quiet. She can hear nothing at all from the living room though. Not the tinny cartoon music or the sing-song voices—or the crackling of the chippie packet, for that matter. She wonders, vaguely, if Daisy might have slipped out the back door and wandered off somewhere down the street, perhaps with her small, square schoolbag on her back. She wonders this, but it hardly becomes a conscious thought, it is more like a soft pulsing in the back of her head, and she doesn’t go and check, just stays there against the door frame, the hard of the wood between her shoulder blades.

  Jack digs his hands deep into his pockets. He yawns, which is a sure sign that he’s nervous.

  ‘You and me,’ he says, ‘we could have made something of our lives together. Do you ever think that? That you and I could have made something?’

  He says this to her chest, and Lola instinctively crosses her arms and breathes the smoke in the air, its slight sharpness moving through her nostrils and hitting the back of her throat.

  ‘I think we made plenty,’ she says, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

  She’d intended for it to be funny—she meant, made plenty of love, made a big enough mess, that sort of thing. She thought he’d laugh, and then she could laugh too. They could laugh together and it would all feel okay. But Jack doesn’t laugh, or even smile. He squints at the sky and at a plane’s lights blinking across it. The sky is an inky blue now, flat and smooth as steel. She wonders if he heard her.

  ‘Well, of course,’ she says, ‘of course I thought that once, Jack. But not any more. Why would I think that now? There’s no point.’ She can feel her voice rising, just a little. ‘If there was a point, Jack, I would think it.’

  He leans over and takes her fingers in his, inching his hand forward so that hers is soon totally swallowed. His palm presses against the tips. It is clammy, unnaturally so, Lola thinks, hardly warm at all. How odd, she thinks to herself, that they should end like this; him holding her hand so tight, sweating all over the place.

  He says, ‘The point, Lola, is that we’re here, and we’re talking. That is the point.’

  His head shakes a little as he says it, a small tremor, and it reminds Lola of a musical instrument—the way the words have a slight lilt as they come out of his mouth.

  *

  Jack Wright had come over that morning, after Daisy had gone to school, and hadn’t left all day.

  That’s not how it was supposed to be, but Lola had given up on trying to control things like that long ago.

  Lola and Jack had sat in the front room and talked about Jack’s wife—now ex—and his kids, who were older than Daisy, the youngest in his first year of high school. Lola talked a little about Daisy too, but there was not so much to say, her being just little, and new to school. Jack feigned interest, but Lola could see the blankness in his face when she talked about Daisy, a blankness which he tried to cover up, quite unsuccessfully. She was not his child, after all. Why should he even pretend to care?

  Jack had aged a bit, but in an odd way; some of him almost seemed younger. He appeared thinner and taller, wiry, and a little more stooped. His fingers constantly moved to the edges of his eyes, right by the temples, to rub the skin. He didn’t seem to know he was doing this, which Lola thought was a bad sign.

  He talked and talked—about all sorts of things, but mainly about his mother, who had just died; his mother, whom Lola hadn’t seen for ten years. Lola hadn’t seen Jack for a year or so either, as a matter of fact. He’d been out of town for a while; just dropped in every now and then to say hello quite out of the blue. But it was a different kind of hello this time. It was a bags packed, boxed up, plane waiting sort of hello. Jack’s mother was dead, and he was off: that was the sort of hello it was.

  The funeral had been two days before. Lola hadn’t gone, but Jack told her all about it, whether she wanted to hear it or not. He stared off into space and told her how they’d put pointy shoes on her dead swollen feet, the sound the coffin made when they shut it. She’d looked as young as ever, he said. She’d had a boyfriend right up until the end—she’d always had boyfriends—and still dyed her hair blonde, though it was more like yellow. She had said to Jack on the phone, ‘I think I may die this week, Jack,’ casually, as if announcing the arrival of the mail. He had misunderstood; he thought she meant her hair, the roots.

  Jack and Lola had eaten lunch at the table: spaghetti on toast, Jack’s favourite. He pulled her towards him as she was walking past his chair; pulled quite firmly so that she stumbled a little, falling onto his knee.

  ‘How long’s it been, Lol?’ he whispered into her neck. ‘How long?’

  ‘Jack, don’t,’ she said. ‘You know we can’t. Not now that you’re going for good. Jack. Please.’

  He burrowed his face deeper into the skin, but she could still hear his words, as if they were moving into the flesh, right into her, weaving up the inside of her throat, spiralling up the tunnels towards her ears.

  ‘I always remember you, when I’m gone,’ he said. ‘Always, Lol, after we’ve been here. The scent of you.’ His tongue flickered across her collarbone. ‘The scent of you.’

  He moved his hands squarely up under her dress, pressing the palms against her skin, his fingers searching around up there. She felt her head fall down towards his face, as if it wasn’t hers any more, her own self slipping away. Her mouth was on his skin, and on his mouth, and inside it, her teeth grating a little against his gums and lips. She could taste the remnants of spaghetti in his mouth—that, and the taste of his skin, which was smoky, like a weak fire was trying to burn somewhere deep inside him, unable to really take light.

  He was working at her dress with his hands, struggling with it, and the top was half off before it came back to her—a memory, or the reality of things—and she was able to take a hold again. Jack had her bottom lip between his teeth. He was eating her alive.

  ‘Jack,’ she said, the word sounding slurred and poorly formed, hardly audible against his mouth. ‘Jack, don’t. Jack. Stop now.’

  She pushed at his chin with her hand, and arched her head away, her neck on a strange slant, her face angled towards the window. She opened her eyes wide then. Out the window she could see the lemon tree in the back yard, its body heavy with fat yellow fruit. She just looked at it for a while, feeling the heaving of Jack’s breathing all around her, but not listening to it, not paying attention. Jack’s hands still moved against her skin, but slower now, one shoved awkwardly up under her dress—a stray finger hooked inside the elastic trim of her knickers—the other close to her neck, kneading at her, as if she were dough. Through the streakiness of the window the tree did not look as bright as it did from outside, but it seemed impossibly round, all those leaves and lemons forming one solid ball.

  ‘The trouble,’ Lola said, quite calmly, staring out the window, fixated on that tree, ‘is that you only want me when you’re not with me, Jack. That’s the trouble.’

  His hands went slack as she said it, the fingers seeming to recoil away from her skin. Lola felt as if she might cry, as if she could lose herself again, but in a different way. No. Not today. She’d done enough crying about Jack Wright to sink a ship—about him, and at him. She’d done enough of that.

  She lifted herself up off his knee—up and away—and only half heard the exasperated sigh that came out of his mouth; only half heard it, she realised later, because he lifted his hands to his face as it slipped out. He knew she was right. What she’d said, he knew, was true.

  He cleared the table, and they did the dishes, he humming softly to himself, pretending not to be cross. Afterwards they sat on the two-seater couch, side by side, not saying anything. Jack held Lola’s hand and tried to put his arm round her shoulders, casually, but nervously, as if they were on their first date. His armpit smelt like someone familiar, she thought—the slight tang of sweat, the far-off smell of cheap deodorant hanging in the air—but it could have
been the smell of anybody, really. She let herself be held by him, but she didn’t respond; applied no pressure to his hand when he held hers, tilted her head slightly away when his arm curled round her neck.

  They had not talked about it, his leaving, even though that was why he came around. They didn’t talk about it all day, and they were only talking about it now because he was—leaving—and there were no two ways about that.

  *

  Lola sees that the sky is turning quite dark. There is still a yellowy sick kind of green above the horizon, but it is disappearing fast. The street lights are growing stronger, or that’s how it seems. It is really just that the sky is giving up, she thinks; it is submitting to their electric glow.

  Over the road Mrs Jones draws up in her car. Her terrier is sitting beside her in the passenger seat. Mrs Jones opens and shuts the doors, and talks to the dog as if it can understand every word. She can see Lola and Jack on the porch, but she doesn’t wave. Her voice fades as she trots up the path, and then the sound disappears completely, punctuated by the slamming of the front door. Lights snap on inside.

  They watch her draw the curtains.

  ‘I would have liked to have gone to the Grand Canyon,’ Jack says to Lola. ‘Wouldn’t you have liked to have gone there? I think of all the places to go that would be the one. Imagine, all that air, right down to the bottom where there used to be water.’

  ‘You could still go there,’ Lola says, quite sharply. ‘Nothing’s stopping you.’

  ‘I could,’ Jack says to her, and laughs, as if the thought has never occurred to him. ‘Yeah, Lola, you’re quite right.’

  What a fool he is, she thinks to herself. A damn fool.

  Overhead, a jet roars, making the whole porch shake. Jack watches it, waiting for it to pass, and then he claps his hands twice, in a brisk, energetic way. He is suddenly bright, as if he has just remembered how great he is in this world.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I guess this is me, then.’

  He starts down the steps, and Lola moves along behind him, right down to the footpath and the road, right to his car.

  Jack fumbles in his pockets for the keys, and pulls them out and unlocks the door; opens it. He stands before her, smiling a ridiculous jolly smile. He leans to kiss her cheek, and aims so far from her mouth that he hits her ear and the hair tucked behind it. He doesn’t pause there, not even for a second.

  He hops into the car, closes the door, winds down the window. It squeaks, moving down in small jolts.

  Lola has a sudden urge to burst his bubble. She hadn’t intended to be nice, telling him he could still go to the Canyon on his own, but it seems to have given him a strange glow, as if he is already there, in the heat. She thinks of him booking a ticket and flying all that way, and driving in some snazzy car, a Cadillac probably, her Jack Wright, the wind blowing in his hair. She can see the cacti all around and the red parched earth, and the road, straight as far as you can see; him driving along it, fast, right to that hole in the ground.

  She leans towards the window.

  ‘You know what you said? About, do I ever think? I used to still think we’d eventually get married, until not so long ago. I kept on thinking that and believing it. That one day we would—’ and then she pauses, moves her foot along the edge of the gutter. ‘I thought that for a long time, Jack,’ she says, ‘but not any more.’

  He turns the key in the ignition, and the headlights on, and the lights on the dashboard seem to spring towards his face, highlighting the creases round his mouth and eyes.

  He smiles at her, though it almost seems a grimace, showing his gums which look a dark spongy pink, and the edges of the teeth below them, slightly stained.

  ‘Lola Lollipop,’ he says, smiling all the time. ‘My little Lola Lollipop.’ And then he accelerates, swerving out onto the road and away.

  Lola pads up the steps and onto the porch and inside. Daisy is still there, sitting in the living room in the dark, the television flickering blue, making the whole room seem alive. Daisy’s hands are in her lap and the whites of her eyes are lit up. She looks so small on that big puffy couch.

  ‘It’s dark,’ Lola says to her. ‘Why didn’t you turn the light on?’ And she flicks the switch so that the room is suddenly white, not flickering, not blue. How light swallows up darkness, Lola thinks, and the thought seems achingly meaningful, just for that moment, as if she’s never thought anything like it before.

  ‘Has Uncle Jack gone?’ Daisy says.

  ‘He isn’t your uncle,’ says Lola, ‘but call him what you want. And yes, he has.’

  She cooks dinner, and runs Daisy’s bath, and makes her bed while she’s splashing around in there. She empties out her schoolbag, finds her lunchbox and bins the remainders. The television is still going in the living room. She can hear the voices blaring down the hallway.

  As she’s drawing Daisy’s curtains she looks out the window and sees Mrs Jones and the terrier in the front yard. Mrs Jones’s outside light is on, so it looks as if the two of them are on a stage, the square of grass unnaturally green, the potted palms casting long shadows, the dog crouching, ears back, concentrating hard, looking slightly dismayed. Mrs Jones is congratulating it—though Lola can’t hear the words, her tone is light and joyful, like bells—and fluttering her hands together. The dog is finished. It turns around and bounds inside. Mrs Jones pauses a moment in the cool autumn air.

  *

  At 9.15 the phone rings. It is Mike McDougall, Lola’s boyfriend.

  ‘Baby, baby, baby,’ he says to her, and starts singing—the song about Lola, the one he always sings when he rings her up, as if she hasn’t heard it a million times before. Does he know what it is about? Lola thinks. Does he realise the comparison isn’t flattering?

  She tries to make appreciative noises nevertheless, but she swings her slippered foot and examines the blunt, dark hairs sprouting on her legs.

  Mike travels a lot, selling water filters to companies all over the country. He is calling from a motel. He is already in bed.

  ‘Tell me about your day,’ he says, once he’s finished with his crooning. He yawns; she can hear him shifting in the sheets.

  ‘My day?’ Lola says naturally. ‘You know. Daisy to school, Daisy home, Daisy to bed.’

  ‘Yeah, Daisy,’ Mike says. ‘I called earlier. She said you were down on the road, saying goodbye to Uncle Jack.’ He pauses, just for a second. ‘Who’s Uncle Jack?’ he says. There isn’t even a hint of suspicion in his voice.

  Lola doesn’t skip a beat.

  ‘Oh you know,’ she says. ‘Jack Bauman? Have you met him? Jack Bauman, friend of Joyce’s. Just dropped by. I’m not sure what for.’ She can see a beetle moving across the floor. It may be a cockroach. She flicks her leg out to step on it, and then decides not to; sits back down.

  ‘Jack Bauman? Doesn’t ring a bell,’ Mike says. He sounds weary. Lola hears him shift again in the sheets. ‘Uncle Jack,’ he says. ‘I like that. Maybe Daisy should call me that—Uncle Mike, I mean. Uncle Mike. Good ring to it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe she should,’ Lola says. She feels a rushing in her blood, as if it’s devouring itself, a cool swift crackling. She leans her cheek against the vinyl of the chair. ‘I wish I was right there with you,’ she says suddenly to Mike McDougall, lying in his motel bed somewhere in another town. She can picture his strong, leathery-skinned chest, the way his body narrows as it moves down towards the hips. She feels that she can almost see the view from his window, a red neon light flashing on and off, on and off. ‘I wish I was right there,’ she says to him again, in a voice she never uses. ‘I wish I could crawl in beside you and lie with my head on your chest. Wouldn’t that be nice? If we were lying there together?’

  Mike sighs, or yawns, Lola can’t tell which. He sounds pleased, though, as if the conversation is winding down, in just the right way.

  ‘Yeah, doll,’ he says to her. ‘That’d be great. We could settle down and have a hell of a good sleep. Did I tel
l you I drove thirteen hours today?’

  Lola is in the kitchen, cleaning up the dishes, when something makes her stop short. It is nearly ten o’clock and she thinks she’s heard a strange noise, something from outside: that is how abruptly she stops to cock her head. She listens for a moment, but there is nothing. She’s pretty sure of that. If she could see out the kitchen window she would be totally sure, but all she can see is herself, under the yellow kitchen light, strands of fly-away hair illuminated, standing up all over her head like a fuzzy halo. She looks tired and bag-eyed and saggy, and she just looks right into that reflection, not at the cupboards, or the calendar, or the cookbooks that are behind her, all reflected back too, but at her face, right into it.

  The sound, she suddenly realises, is coming from inside her, seemingly far away, but inside her, definitely. Maybe the wave has hit, she thinks.

  But it’s not Jack. She doesn’t think so anyway. She pictures him baring his teeth at her like a dog, just before he drove away; the way he said, Lola Lollipop. Lola Lollipop, as if she was eighteen again.

  No, it wasn’t Jack Wright and his leaving. He was a fool and she was glad.

  She dips her hands back into the tepid water and swirls the dishcloth over a plate, slowly. The sound is still in there, a faint rushing, like a dam has broken and a river is moving through her body, up towards her head. She thinks of Mike McDougall, her man Mike, somewhere in a motel bed, snoring probably, his mouth wide open. Thinking of him makes her pause again. She lifts her head and looks at the yellow room on the window pane. It is as if the dark outside isn’t really there. It is only her in this world, in this yellow room. She smiles, just to check, and sure enough her self smiles back, reassuringly.

  She thinks about what she said to Mike on the phone. The surge that moved through her body when she said it. It had almost felt like happiness, that feeling, but not quite. It was power, Lola realises. The power to erase a whole day, and to erase any suspicions as well. How many times has she lied about Jack and never noticed it, that feeling? It was the power of sweetness; the conviction of it. It was still moving through her body, that power, filling her up.