‘Shit,’ Tab says again. She finds the short bunch of hair at the back of her head and she holds onto it. Her mouth is wobbling with the effort of keeping it straight. ‘It’s not funny,’ she says.
‘Not at all,’ Lona can barely say.
Tab’s mouth tears at the seams and they are both laughing then, louder and louder the more their eyes meet. Tab takes the hair from Lona and holds it in her cupped please sir I want some more hands, like it’s a baby wombat or a ball of blown glass. ‘My darlings,’ she gasps hysterically. ‘My poor, poor darlings.’
Lona blinks the saltwater from her eyes and she can feel it dash down her cheeks in fast, warm streams and the backs of her knuckles are there catching it and reabsorbing it into her skin.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and Tab says, ‘What for?’
Lona grins. ‘I have an idea.’
An ordinary type burial
It’s an ordinary type burial. A hole is dug and the dead are laid in their grave. Lona has picked a spot down by the back fence where several goldfish have turned to toothpick bones. ‘Farewell, my dearests,’ Tab says, and licks a few biscuit bits off her Golden Gaytime.
Lona takes a bite out of her own ice cream and uses a plastic beach spade to refill the hole. ‘They died beholden to nothing and nobody,’ she says. ‘They were the bravest locks of hair I ever knew.’
Tab crouches and uses her free hand to pat the earth down. A couple of stray hairs poke up through the dirt defiantly, refusing their deathbed. ‘We were so good together,’ she sniffs.
They finish their ice creams and then Lona uses a twist tie to bind the sticks together into a cross. Tab plants it into the garden bed.
They stand in silence for a minute, looking down at the roughly assembled grave.
‘This was weird,’ Tab says. She slings an arm around Lona and fits her head into the Tab-shaped crook of Lona’s neck. ‘Thank you.’
Exhibition
Lona gets to Pink Triangle early, plastic ziploc bags full of mutilated books under her arm. Rudi unlocks the door for her and says: ‘You make a mess, you clean it up. Noise off at eleven or the neighbours will be on my arse. Capiche?’
‘Capiche,’ says Lona.
She drags a couple of plinths out from the back room and sets her books up. Covers closed, two to a plinth. She puts a box of rubber gloves next to The Underwater-Man, in case anyone’s keen for a fondle.
She pulls a couple of bottles of seven dollar white wine out of a biodegradable shopping bag and puts them on the foldout table. Puts the hummus and crackers and Black & Gold cheese next to them. Bon appétit.
Before she forgets, she pins the print she made of Grandpa’s photograph onto the back wall. Grandma in the tree, grinning. Lona grins back.
Rowena shows up, panting, at the window. She signs something through the glass, but Lona has no idea what she’s on about. Lona opens the door. ‘What’s that?’
‘Had to park fucking miles away,’ Rowena wheezes. ‘Couldn’t drag it myself. Need help.’
They carry the sculpture between them. It’s a giant papier-mâché piñata. It is strangely heavy. It smells. They set it down in the centre of the installation.
‘The Monopoly Man?’
‘It’s an ode,’ Rowena says.
‘It’s a $10,000 HECS debt,’ Lona says.
They both grin.
Sim’s late, which is no real surprise. Other people show up before she does, and they start milling around. Rowena’s art school friends pose with the Monopoly Man, who is now swinging dangerously from the ceiling. Others paw through Lona’s books. There’s not much else to do, so they stand around and talk. Lona plugs in her hot pink iPod and brings up something boring and trendy.
Tab sweeps in with her usual aplomb, wearing a long floral dress that doesn’t quite reach her Grandad Shoes. Her hair is braided several times and in several directions around her head so that there is no way of telling a chunk of it is missing. She makes a beeline straight for Lona with her hands held out in front of her. Lona feels the grin crawl across her already flushed face, because it’s her friend, Tab, and she feels giddy, relieved, excited, always, every time she sees her crossing the room to get to her. Here she comes.
Apologies and excuses
Lona’s phone shimmies in her pocket with apologies and excuses. The whole gamut of reasons why people aren’t coming:
a) father’s birthday
b) boyfriend’s football club presentation night
c) intense cramps
d) streaming Doctor Who same time as the UK
She turns her phone to silent, and then off. Doesn’t even read the one from Sampson. Doesn’t even check to see if George has replied to the message she sent yesterday. Tab gets them both wine, served in a Frozen plastic cup with Olaf the snowman melting on one side and smiling on the other. Tab stands at Lona’s elbow and Lona stands at Tab’s elbow and sometimes they go talk to other people.
Sim bursts in with two canvases under each arm. ‘Argh, there’s no hooks!’ she exclaims. Lona points out that there are indeed hooks, in fact multiple hooks, but Sim says, ‘There’s no time!’ She takes the foldout chairs out from under several people and sits the paintings on them.
Rach trails in after her and tells Lona, ‘The new girl snores.’
A song that was big five years ago comes on and people start to sing along. Lona looks over her shoulder and sees Tab dancing with a person Lona is 95 per cent sure Tab just met. The grin sits in the corner of Lona’s mouth and refuses to budge.
She turns back to Rach and nods while Rach talks about burpees.
The main event
‘All right, now for the main event!’ Rowena announces, clapping her hands together as she clambers up onto a chair.
Despite being the organiser of this exhibition, Lona was not aware that there was a main event. Someone pauses the music despite Lona’s hand-scrawled note promising: touch the music and die.
Rowena lovingly pats the side of the Monopoly Man’s bloated face. ‘It’s time to demolish this fucker!’ she shouts. Lona belatedly notices that Rowena is holding a baseball bat.
Tab leans close. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, but I love it.’
Rowena jumps down from the chair, violet Docs smacking the floor. She gets into a good position: feet shoulder-width apart, two-handed hold on the bat. She wriggles her shoulders a bit, making a show of it like she always used to back in inter-school sport. The other girls on the team used to hate it, but this room is loving it.
‘Step back! Step back!’ Rowena swings and the bat smacks into the Monopoly Man, sending him careening away and then straight back into another swing. Rowena turns and offers Lona the bat. ‘Left field?’
Lona takes it. The room is hot and full and loud and Lona is a sponge, soaking it all up. She mimics Rowena, getting a good grip on the bat and then smacks it into the piñata. There’s a cheer. Lona hands the bat along.
Lona notices that her parents have arrived. They’re standing just inside the door wearing nice clothes. ‘You came,’ she says.
‘What on earth is going on?’ Mum asks.
Lona glances at the door and then the photograph of Grandma on the back wall. ‘Where’s Grandpa?’
‘He wasn’t feeling up to it. He’s sorry.’
There’s a sudden gasp and cacophony as the piñata bursts. Whooping and stamping and then a smell hits the room. Someone groans. ‘Oh, Jesus, what?’
Lona turns in time to see a cascade of pellets pouring from the wound in the Monopoly Man’s belly. Mum crinkles her nose. ‘Is that…’
There are tampons waterfalling onto the painted white floor. The tampons are soaked with what Lona hopes is brown paint.
Needless to say, everyone realises they’ve very suddenly and inescapably got other places to be.
Wet wipes
Rowena is on the floor with a ten-pack of wet wipes. Sim and Rach are sitting drinking what’s left of the wine, while Tab and Lona box step to
Ace of Base. Mum and Dad are up the street at a restaurant that doesn’t smell like menstrual blood. Lona will join them eventually.
Tab grabs Lona’s hands and they wash the dishes dry the dishes turn the dishes over. Sim and Rach get up and join in. ‘What about that one that went like oranges and lemons something something lemons?’ Sim asks.
‘Ring the bells of St Clements,’ Rowena says from the floor.
‘Or ring-a-ring-a-rosy,’ Tab suggests.
It’s just after nine. An earlier night than was anticipated, but then the night has so far been many things that weren’t anticipated. Lona finds herself held on both sides by hands that swing her round and round. She can see Grandpa’s photo every time she goes past. Grandma in the arms of a tree. Lona in the arms of a tree.
‘Ugh, I feel sick,’ she says, stumbling away from the others. Her head is giddy black dots and she slumps on a foldout chair, laughing.
Photo frame
Lona puts a cup of tea on the wheeled bench and moves it closer to Grandpa. It’s still steaming. Dash of milk, no sugar. Just made, by Lona, in the kitchenette. She slips off her backpack and unzips it. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ she says.
Grandpa is in his wheelchair, but he’s not speaking. He gazes out the window of his room into the bare courtyard with its plastic chairs that always seem to be fallen on their sides. She takes out a bundle. She’s wrapped her cardigan around a photo frame. She takes the frame out and shows it to him.
He glances at it. For a minute Lona is afraid he isn’t going to respond. Then he takes it from her. The picture of Grandma in the tree.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asks. His voice is croaky and sick sounding.
‘The Pentax,’ she explains. ‘The roll of film that was in there.’
‘I took this?’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ she says. She tries to imagine not being able to remember taking a photo. She’s not lived long enough to know what it’s like to forget.
His hands are shaking. The doctors still don’t know what’s wrong with his legs. Multiple sclerosis. Parkinson’s. Lyme disease. They’ve given up because in the end he’s old and so: what does he expect. Something will go wrong and so: at least he’s got his mind.
This place is bad for him. It’s made him not-him. Lona can see that but it’s easier to say it and feel better about having said it than to actually do anything. ‘I showed it at my art show,’ she says. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
The frame slips slightly in his hands. His fingers don’t have feeling right to the tips anymore. Lona asks, ‘Do you want me to put it on your bedside table?’
He says, ‘Please.’
She clears space between the tissue box and the spare fruit cup and the Inter-Dens and the nail scissors. The woman that Lona never knew smiles. Lona props the two Polaroids on either end. Three generations. Makes it fit.
Grandpa notices the cup of tea Lona made and he stares at it a moment before picking it up, slowly, carefully, and taking a sip. It’s not long before he has gulped it down to leafy dregs. The empty cup clatters back into its saucer and he nods, satisfied.
Lona smiles, and crouches down to open her backpack again. ‘I also hope you don’t mind but I’ve been borrowing your books.’ She gets out Death on the Nile, unrecognisable now, AN ART OBJECT emblazoned on its cover. She hands it tentatively to him. ‘I did a bunch of these for the show.’
‘What is it?’ he asks, struggling with the pages. She sees Grandpa’s eyes pass uncomprehendingly over the collages and the scrawled pleas to: let me comprehend my own reality. She feels a twinge of shame. She’s already sick of her work. It’s always the same. Don’t do the same thing twice. Make so you don’t have to make again.
He looks up and there’s a shard of clean black spearing his cloudy irises. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it,’ he says.
Lona thinks of the tampon Monopoly Man and waves a hand, eternally thankful for the opposite. ‘Nah, it’s all good.’
There’s a knock on the door and Grandpa and Lona shout at the same time: ‘NO TEA!’ The carer is already halfway into the room and jumps a little bit.
‘Oh, sorry, yes,’ she says, retreating like Russia circa 1915.
Lona says, ‘You want me to read you something? Death on the Nile?’
Grandpa flicks through the book. ‘I’m not sure this is legible.’
Lona pulls another copy out of her bag, filched from the shelf in Ben’s old bedroom this morning. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty to spare.’
Call centre
Lona gets a job in a Ticketmaster call centre. She works four days a week and gets sick leave. Her favourite phrase is: you need to speak to Ticketek, we don’t sell tickets to the MCG. She enjoys the part where she gets to hang up.
She has a colleague called Rob in the next booth along who has SHORTCAKE inexplicably tattooed on the inside of his arm and she slides effortlessly into inexplicable, debilitating love with him.
She reads spy novels and experimental modernist fiction and true crime on the train to the Hawthorn office. On Fridays she paints and crochets. She continues to take pictures when people pay her to. She listens to music, binges Netflix, eats snacks and ruins her dinner, gets irritated by her parents, her friends, the world and herself. She messages Tab:
Do you want to see a movie tomorrow?
Tab messages:
u read my mind
The last one
There’s a girl up on the platform with her phone plugged into an AUX cord. Planet Skate is reverberating with the sound of ‘Cotton Eye Joe.’ There is the spongy noise of laughter and the roll of a hundred wheels.
Pat waves from the counter and holds up a hand. The girl leans over the microphone and breaks the bad news: this one’s the last one. She’s got her pink hair braided across her forehead. She is wearing a black t-shirt over a purple skivvy. Her cheap blue lipstick is faded everywhere but the corners.
Across the room, Lona leans her elbows on the counter and asks Pat, ‘Where’d you find the new girl?’
Pat glances over at the pink-haired girl on the stereo platform. ‘That’s Sissy Nguyen,’ she says.
‘That’s Sissy Nguyen?’ Lona says, incredulous. Lona went to primary school with Sissy’s older sister. Last time she saw Sissy, she was rocking velcro T-bars and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack.
‘What are you doing here?’ Pat asks.
Lona shrugs. ‘Thought I’d just come and say hi.’
‘Did you just?’ Pat waves at Sissy again. Taps her watch. ‘I thought you quit so you’d have weekends off.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Pat gives her an amused look. ‘So you thought you’d just come and say hi, eh?’
Lona wiggles her shoulders up and down, up and down. Her backpack is bulky but light. All she’s got in it is her wallet and her skates. ‘Yeah, and well…’ she says. ‘I may as well have a skate while I’m here.’
Floor lights
The big overhead lights go out with a dull clap. Pat leaves the floor lights on. Sissy is sweeping up the chip crumbs and Paddle Pop sticks. She is desperate to get home and changed for a friend’s birthday. ‘I can finish that up,’ Lona tells her.
Sissy says, ‘God, you’re a gem. Also, who are you?’
Pat heads for the back door with a couple of garbage bags. ‘Lona,’ she says. ‘You planning on staying long?’
‘Yeah, I can lock up. I’ve still got my key.’
‘I thought I asked for that back.’
Lona takes the hairy mop from Sissy and sets about sweeping. Pat comes back from the dumpsters and looks around. ‘Where’s Sissy?’
‘I sent her home.’
‘Lona, you don’t work here.’ But the Tiges are playing the Demons in the semi-finals and Pat’s keen to get home, so she leaves Lona.
Lona gets into her skates, threading up the tired grey laces. She rolls out into the rink. The ground simply slips by underneath her. She’s barely touching it, barely an
y place long enough to make an impact.
It’s quiet, dead quiet, and she can hear the friction of her jean legs rubbing against one another: the thst-thst of it. She wonders if Grandpa would’ve liked to skate, before wheels became a necessary appendage. She wonders if Mum’s going to order the lamb curry like she promised. She wonders if she’ll run into Rob on the way home. She calculates a two per cent chance considering factors: get a grip, he’s just a boy.
She skates backwards, moonwalking. She’s got a song stuck in her head and it’s not the perfect soundtrack for the moment, in fact it’s a really irritating soundtrack for the moment. It’s that song that’s everywhere right now and maybe that’s the only reason that Lona hates it and maybe taste is internalised misogyny like Tab says or maybe it’s just a shit song. Who the hell knows.
Lona is skating, and there is a sound like stones being turned over and over in a palm as she circles faster, faster. Her wheels glance across the wounded linoleum that’s been bruised by the elbows and knees of a hundred thousand screaming children and her ears are full of blood, heartbeat, viscous juice.
Somewhere, elsewhere, her phone starts to buzz.
Acknowledgements
To everyone at Text, I am so very grateful for your enthusiasm and your belief in Loner right from the beginning. I went from no one having read my book to being suddenly overwhelmed by your warmth and passion for all things Lona—you have all made me feel so welcome. To my editor Samantha Forge, I apologise for my tardy email response rate and thank you immensely for your keen insight and your ability to know exactly where my manuscript needed just that little bit more. To Jane Watkins, a hearty thanks for your zeal and your support in my very first attempts to talk publically and articulately about my work. Props to Imogen Stubbs and Rachel Szopa for the zazzy-as-all-heck cover.
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