Loner

by Georgina Young

  She gets her old CD/cassette/radio stereo out of the back shed and connects it up in Ben’s old room for Grandpa. ‘Now you just put the CD in and press play,’ she tells him. He does not look overly enthusiastic.

  The photograph of him standing out the front of his house is still on the dresser. There are two polaroids beside it: one that Grandpa took of Lona and one that Lona took of Mum.

  Grandpa presses play on the stereo after much cajoling from Lona. They listen to the first few lines. Lona keeps an eager expression frozen on her face. Grandpa says, ‘Thanks Lona,’ and presses stop.

  ‘Oh no!’ she cries. ‘You’ve got to press pause otherwise it’ll go back to the start.’

  ‘Hm,’ Grandpa says. ‘I see.’

  Lona makes them both tea and then Grandpa takes a nap. She tells him to call her if he has any difficulties with the CD player. She takes 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s the Man and Clueless from the DVD cabinet. Anything that takes a revered work of literature and stuffs it into high school melodrama. Mum says, ‘Come for dinner Friday.’

  Lona says, ‘I work Fridays. I always work Fridays.

  Have you forgotten everything about me already?’

  Mum rolls her eyes and doesn’t ask her to stay for the bolognese that is currently bubbling away on the stovetop. Lona has got to refine her technique.

  Prosciutto-wrapped melon

  Lona photographs Alan’s sister’s 18th birthday party. There are a lot of people in Alan’s parents’ house. More people than Lona can comprehend knowing or liking. Alan’s parents are apparently loaded. They make him work at Coles for the sole purpose of building his character. Lona is getting paid more for the gig than she ever would have asked for. The house is beautiful. An old brick mansion in Malvern East.

  Lona chews on prosciutto-wrapped melon between shots.

  Alan’s little sister Tilly pulls her around by the wrist because she needs to have a photo with everyone while her make-up is good, otherwise what’s the point in even throwing a party.

  The music is loud and peppily misogynistic. The guests are drunk before they arrive. Everyone is equal parts afraid and in reverence of the camera. They want to see their photo before it is uploaded to Facebook in an album titled: 18 (SPARKLING HEART). They prod their greasy prosciutto fingers against the display screen as Lona shows them and they say: can you zoom in just a bit. This is the fear of being caught for one moment in a position that was not properly manufactured for mass consumption. This is the fear of representation of self subsuming the self.

  Lona is not using a wide-angle lens. This is inexplicably disappointing to some. These young people are used to a wide-angle lens. They want the shots that they get in nightclubs that always make at least one person on the edge of the frame look like a misshapen leprechaun.

  ‘But you will put a blue filter on it, right?’ they ask desperately.

  Lona tells them whatever she thinks will help them sleep at night.

  At around nine o’clock she notices there’s someone looking at her from across the room. He waves. It’s George. He comes over and there is the usual tennis match of what are you doing heres that the situation requires.

  George tutors Tilly in Maths Methods. Her mother insisted he come along, he explains to Lona’s bewildered expression.

  ‘I’m really just here for the fancy cantaloupe,’ he says. ‘Eighteen-year-olds are exhausting.’ He has his hair pulled back into a short, blunt bunch. He is wearing a loose tie. He looks nice.

  ‘You want a picture?’ she asks. He doesn’t know how to pose. He just stands. Lona smiles with her face squashed behind the camera.

  He follows her around as she takes photographs. The faces that present themselves to her get sweatier and blanker. She caps the lens. No one’s going to appreciate any documentation of the night from this point onwards. Time for the party to belong to itself.

  ‘You want a drink?’ George asks. She experiences a momentary flashback cringe to the hard cider, five chins incident. He gets her a glass of moscato.

  ‘I didn’t realise your opinion of me was so low.’ She grins, gulping thirstily at it.

  ‘Classic white girl, classic white girl drink.’ He grins back.

  They sit on the nice couch in the nice front room that has all the nice furniture in it. They are exhausted because they are two years older than everyone else here and it is their solemn duty to sigh: I’m so glad I’m past that.

  They talk books. George tells her that he’s reading Gogol, because he’s trying to impress her with something literary and obscure. She tells him that she’s reading The Hunger Games because she’s trying to impress him with something so mainstream and prolific it’s practically post-modern.

  He plays bass in a funk ska band. He looks so nice.

  Lona is folding herself into the possibility of his mouth on her mouth and she’s aching like her body actually expects her to go through with it.

  Alan’s mum hands Lona an envelope chock-full of rich-people pay and Lona waves it at George: midnight pancakes? Macca’s? The words almost exist. She taps the corner of the envelope on her silent lips. George looks at his watch. ‘I should get the train,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, right,’ Lona says.

  The hug is firm, friendly. ‘It was good to see you, Lona.’

  She nods. ‘Yeah.’

  Nick

  Occasionally, as is statistically likely, Lona and Nick are left alone in each other’s company. This occurs when Tab:

  a) goes to the bathroom

  b) takes a phone call from her parents c) insists it’s her turn to make tea

  d) runs into the next room for that book she wanted to show Lona

  Whatever conversation they were having with Tab inevitably peters out with a forced laugh from either party, and then they are left to fend for themselves. Lona slips into the little-researched gap between fight and flight that involves going rigid and staring straight ahead. Nick thumbs at his phone like he’s the kind of person who would be getting a whole lot of messages at 10.30 p.m. on a Thursday night.

  Sometimes he will try to start a whole new conversation. Lona does her best not to look at him in disbelieving horror. Surely he knows that Tab is the only small, tenuous thread that keeps them swinging around in the same orbit.

  ‘You follow the footy?’ he asks on one occasion. They are at a sports-themed pizza bar in Hawthorn. Tab has just gone to order drinks. There is a life-size picture of LeBron James on the wall. There are multiple television screens displaying multiple different combinations of men throwing around balls.

  ‘No,’ Lona says.

  Despite the negatory response, this is Melbourne, so the follow-up question is inevitable either way. ‘You have a team, though?’

  Lona sighs. ‘I have a problem with the fact that two of our state public holidays are dedicated to sporting events which encourage excessive gambling and glorify talents that contribute nothing to society as a whole.’

  Nick blinks. If he was faster or meaner, he might point out that art contributes nothing to society as a whole, and neither does making smartarse comments about things. But he just smiles and shrugs. ‘Got me there.’

  Nick is potentially attractive, but seeing as he has clearly belonged to Tab since the first time they met, Lona sees him less as an actual man than: the person that Tab is seeing. He is going bald, or at least he will be in a few years’ time. He’s got what’s left of his hair shaved close to his skull. Everywhere else he’s dark, thick fur. Eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, forearms where he’s got his shirt rolled up. He’s studying law but he never talks about it. He loves Tame Impala and Murakami, both of which he always talks about.

  He lent Lona his copy of Kakfa on the Shore two weeks ago. He says it’s his favourite book and that he’s read it five times, which is clearly evident. The cover has been bent back so much it’s held together with tape. It is the complete opposite of the straight, perfect paperbacks that fit in Lona’s alphabetised stacks. She t
old Nick he was guilty of book abuse. He told her he doesn’t trust people who are afraid to crack the spines of the things they love.

  Nick is trying to be her friend. She realises this, but she also resents it. She doesn’t want to have to be friends with someone just because Tab is enjoying their coital and intellectual company. She never wants to do anything just because. Just because is a stupid excuse for pointless life decisions.

  Tab returns to the table with a jug of cider. ‘Drink up, kidlets,’ she says. ‘Movie starts in twenty minutes.’

  They are going to the Lido to see a film that Lona doesn’t really want to see, but they couldn’t get tickets for the one Tab suggested first and hey, Nick says this one is meant to be really good.

  The upside: at least if it sucks, Lona can hold it against him for the rest of her earthly days.

  Burgers

  Tab does exactly what Lona secretly wants her to do but is too afraid to ask, lest it become obvious to anyone, ever, that Lona Wallace has feelings that can be hurt and unfulfilled and used against her. Tab organises a double date with Nick and George.

  ‘Jesus, I’m not a charity case,’ Lona says, scowling. The moment Tab leaves the room, Lona punches the air like she’s in the fucking Breakfast Club.

  They go out for burgers in a warehouse restaurant in Moorabbin. Lona has seen herself eat a burger once when she was seated opposite a mirrored wall panel at Grill’d. ‘Really?’ she questions Tab, who has had to endure the sight of Lona wolfing a burger on numerous occasions herself.

  ‘Get it out of the way,’ she shrugs. ‘If he wants you after this, nothing’s going to put him off.’

  Lona and George sit next to each other so that she gets the press of his elbow through her denim jacket. Tab has engineered it this way. Lona doesn’t know why. She likes having a table between herself and any other human. It feels too unnecessarily intimate to turn to speak to him when he is right there.

  She solves this dilemma by staring down at her food while tomato jam and patty grease trickle through her fingers. She doesn’t look at anyone aside from Tab, who keeps giving spasmodic head jerks in George’s direction. Lona barely says anything. She feels stupid and uninteresting. She wants to dig something out from between her front teeth but she is unsure if this is something you can do in front of the person you are futilely attempting to imagine yourself being with.

  Afterwards Tab drives Lona home. ‘You should have told me you didn’t like him,’ she says. ‘He’s into you and tonight would’ve been pretty sucky for him.’

  Lona allows herself to be chastised. She goes home and lies awake, her fingers finding the places she wishes she was brave enough to let him touch.

  Full trolley

  Lona buys a pair of fingerless gloves, the kind you get if you ride a bike a lot. She veers around the car park at Coles with stacks of trolleys, blisters blooming on her palms regardless.

  Trolley duty is shit. But because she negotiated for it as a feminist statement, there is no way she’s giving in.

  She spends hours jamming trolleys that fit together, and unjamming trolleys that don’t fit together. She rescues strays from the grass out the front of the store over and over again. She loses all faith in humanity as a species. Her hypothesis: people are shit and lazy, and their treatment of shopping trolleys is symptomatic of this.

  No one looks at her anymore. She is a trolley wheeler. A leper. She finds herself muttering under her breath, curses and snide remarks. Legend grows about the crazy lady who haunts the Huntingdale Coles trolley depositories. Mothers yank their children away from her. She no longer gets any counter shifts. She has gone full trolley.

  Even Tony no longer meets her eye. These days he actually buttons his vest over his Veronica Mars t-shirt. Now Duncan is the only visible character. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.

  Lona wonders if her spirit is being crushed.

  Home for dinner

  On Sunday night, Lona goes home for dinner. Mum makes a roast and Ben brings his girlfriend. Dad and Grandpa are at either end of the table due to the patriarchal structure of society. Lona is dumped over against the back wall with Harriet.

  Lona does not know if she likes Harriet. She doesn’t particularly not like Harriet, it’s just that Harriet has never made an attempt to be anything other than: girlfriend of Ben. Harriet asks, ‘How is uni going?’

  Lona replies, ‘I dropped out of uni five asks of that question ago,’ or more likely she replies with something politer and less true.

  Grandpa barely utters a word. He doesn’t even seem particularly interested or pleased about the fact Lona is around. This hurts Lona in a mosaic of small ways. She asks him if he enjoyed the audio book she gave him for his birthday.

  ‘I…haven’t…listened to it yet,’ he says slowly. His expression is pained, and Lona wonders if he’s having issues with the CD player.

  After dinner, she pops her head into Ben’s old room to see if the stereo is still connected, or if Mum’s moved it while she was tidying up. It’s still plugged in and working, but there’s no sign Grandpa’s even tried to use it. The case for the audio book has been slotted onto the shelf between all the other neglected books.

  Deflated, Lona retreats to her bedroom. There’s a big patch of not-faded carpet where the bed used to be. She doesn’t know where to sit, seeing as she always used to sit on the edge of the bed and stare at herself sitting on the edge of the bed in the mirror. She sits on the desk chair, but it’s not the same. The bookshelves on her walls are empty caves. She opens her desk drawer and sees all the black plastic canisters with grey plastic lids, full of undeveloped film. She shuts the drawer, then opens it again.

  There’s a tote bag hanging from her doorknob, featuring a faded print of Van Gogh’s Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette on one side. She fills it with the film canisters and slings it over her shoulder. Chucks a couple more t-shirts and a discoloured soft-toy Hedwig on top of them.

  She goes out and waves a hand around, announcing her departure.

  When she leaves Mum, Dad, Grandpa, Ben, Harriet, she forces herself to say it like: I’ve got to go home. She declines a lift to the train station. She walks.

  Cup weekend

  Lona goes to the art department on a Monday afternoon early in November. It’s the Melbourne Cup weekend, so she’s hoping no one much will be around. She takes the staircase up to the second floor photo media lab. The darkroom is empty, the IN USE sign unlit.

  Between her and the glorious, silent black of its walls is Tristan. He’s in the printmaking classroom rolling a slab of set text through the printmaker, making flyers for a Marxist Ideas conference.

  Lona wonders what he’s doing here, what he’s always doing here. Maybe it’s the more successful, more talented wife thing. Maybe it’s because he likes being alone. Maybe he’s not meant to be here either.

  Lona stands at the end of the hallway and she knows she’s defeated. Her bag full of undeveloped film bumps against her leg. She considers turning the bathroom at the sharehouse into a darkroom. She considers Sim and Rach banging on the door saying they’ve got to get their hairdryer and get ready right this very minute.

  There’s a part of Lona that has always enjoyed giving up, that has always been slightly relieved when she does. It’s so much easier than trying to make things work.

  There’s a squeak as she turns around. Maybe Tristan hears, maybe he looks up. It wouldn’t matter. The girl is gone.

  The real reason

  The real reason Lona dropped out of art school was because there wasn’t a reason. There was just this hollowed-out space inside of her stomach that made her feel sick and sad all the time and all she knew was that there wasn’t a reason for any of it: the studying art, the not studying art, the making art, the not making art.

  So: anything else. Anything other than the thing she loves, because if the thing she loves doesn’t make her happy, then what’s the point. Pushing shopping trolleys around can distract h
er if she lets it. At least she never expects it to make her whole.

  Emoticons

  Lona messages George. She asks him if he wants to be pretentious and boring and go see the new exhibition at the NGV. She uses the smirking face and the flexed biceps to indicate irony and self-awareness. She takes emoticons extremely seriously. She takes them so seriously that she refuses to call them emojis, because she considers emoji a ridiculous, unserious word. (She will at some point in her life realise that emoji is a Japanese word and then wonder if this makes her a white supremacist.)

  George doesn’t reply for four-and-a-half gruelling hours. He sends back:

  Yeah sounds amazing! (WOMAN DANCING) (OK HAND) (PERSON GETTING MASSAGE) (ALIEN) (SAXOPHONE)

  Lona is understandably confused, but she is pretty certain she just wrangled a date, so she is pretty certain she is happy. She replies:

  Great (THUMBS UP)

  NGV

  They meet at Flinders Street station and walk up to the National Gallery of Victoria. Lona asks if they can just not do the small talk thing and George says, ‘I think I am my mother’s least favourite son.’

  Lona says, ‘I have an anxiety problem.’

  It is Friday night, the gallery is open late. Lona has asked for time off from work specifically. Pat’s husband Bill is DJ-ing the roller disco at Planet Skate tonight. The kids are in for a lot of Phil Collins and disappointment. Lona and George have to line up for tickets, which means they have to stand close and maintain consistent conversation. They talk about what other exhibitions they’ve previously seen here. It is not scintillating, but it is something.

  The current exhibition is a collection of clay pots. The clay pots are purportedly culturally and artistically significant. Lona is known for being: an art person. She herself often makes the mistake of believing about herself what everyone else does: that she must like galleries because she is an art person. By the third room of clay pots, Lona remembers that she is not an art person so much as: a person who makes art but has no real interest in walking around a room and staring at art.