Small Joys of Real Life

by Allee Richards

  Allee Richards’ short fiction has been published widely in Australian literary magazines and anthologies, including Kill Your Darlings, The Best Australian Stories, New Australian Fiction, Best Summer Stories, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Australian Book Review. Small Joys of Real Life is her first novel. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers and the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She lives in Melbourne and works as a theatre lighting technician.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  September

  October

  November

  December

  January

  February

  March

  April

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  For Mum

  THE FIRST TIME I MET you was unremarkable. We were at the Clarke Street house, this June just gone. All my friends were there, plus Travis, as he and Renee had started dating. You’d come with Travis. It wasn’t a party, just a gathering of us. The nights had become utterly bitter and we’d decided to rechristen the chimenea for another winter. I arrived at eleven, after a show. I was in the dregs of a season and had reached that particular state of delirium where I was sick of playing for even the weirdest laughs. Midway through a show lines that were never meant to be funny – Pass the milk, Johnny – are played and played and played, and afterwards the cast laughs about how easy it is to make an audience lose it to anything if you ham it up enough. But I was past that; all that was keeping me going was the knowledge that each act only went for an hour and I could count the number of times I had to do the show again on two hands. I didn’t know then that it would be my final show.

  You were the first person I saw that night. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, on the outer of my friends. I passed you on the way to the fridge, where I placed the beers I’d brought. Whatever conversation had been happening moments before was interrupted with the cheer of my name and someone asked me about work. I quoted a line from the script, exaggerated, like a character in a play acting that they’re in a play. My friends in the kitchen laughed and I left to go stand by the fire outside. I passed you in the doorway again and you introduced yourself. I shook your hand but didn’t bother saying my name as everyone had yelled ‘Eva!’ when I’d arrived. I found Annie and Sarah in the backyard and I don’t remember anything else about that night. Not because I got blackout drunk, which I occasionally did back then – it was just an unremarkable evening.

  THE SECOND TIME we met was two weeks later. Gareth Liddiard was playing in the front bar at The Tote. You were there with Travis and Renee and I was with Sarah and James. No Annie, as she wouldn’t drink the night before a big week. It was a ‘secret show’ – one they don’t advertise or sell tickets to, but tell people to tell people. The place was steaming with the smell of bodies and beer. We were stuffed from door to door, beanies and coats in hand. A line of people pressed right up against the bar looked like they were standing guard, armed with their pints. This was why when Sarah, James and I saw you three we didn’t try to move towards you but just smiled from across the room. Each time the crowd loosened slightly we would shuffle a little closer, and you to us, and eventually I was standing between you and Sarah. I remember Gareth Liddiard saying, ‘This is a song about divorce. You’ve all been divorced, yeah? You’re ugly enough to be, anyway.’ We all laughed, Sarah the loudest. We were in the middle of the crowd and kept being pushed closer to the stage. People trying to move through the room would get stuck. Beers were held aloft to save them being spilled. More than once, I ended up with a person paused near me, their beer held uncomfortably close to my face. At one point a girl standing in front of us spotted a friend who was standing behind us. This girl reached her hand back between you and me, grabbed her friend and pulled her close. She kissed one cheek, then, when her friend had already started moving away, she pulled her back and kissed the other. ‘I just got back from Europe,’ she said. You and I widened our eyes at each other, shared a silent laugh. Gareth Liddiard started a new track and at the end of that, while we were clapping lightly, we looked at each other again, exchanged knowing smiles.

  The group of us sat in the courtyard that night drinking pints. Beanies and coats back on, shoulders hunched for warmth. There were three smokers, which counted you but not me. Travis announced that you had just started up again and you replied, ‘Back with a vengeance.’ You were unashamed, rolling new cigarettes with one still smouldering between your fingers. We didn’t talk that night, not one on one, but our eyes met often and we nodded at one another’s contributions to the conversation. I remember Travis told us about his band. You described their style as ‘dreamy metal’, which I found hard to imagine, although the fact Travis was in a band was unsurprising – he almost always spoke like he was at a mic. We also talked about the fact that there’s a Nicholson Street in Brunswick East so close to a Nicholson Street in Coburg. You said it was because the street once stretched the entire way, until houses were built between the two parts. Otherwise two streets so close together wouldn’t be given the same name. I nodded, staring at you. I never know basic, interestingly uninteresting facts like this and I always wonder how other people do.

  THE LAST TIME I saw you was mid-July. I was at a party with Sarah. I don’t know whose party; Sarah had been invited through someone at work. I hadn’t expected to see anyone we knew, but you were there with Travis. He was high, eyes like a possum’s, telling everyone how much he loved Renee. The lethal combination of two kinds of ecstasy – the synthetic kind and that of the newly in love. ‘She’s, like, the coolest girl in Melbourne,’ he told me. She broke up with him the following weekend, the poor bastard. But as she would say later, thank God she did it when she did. If she’d waited just two more weeks, she would’ve been stuck. Nobody wants to dump the bereaved.

  I remember asking you, ‘Does Travis realise he only ever talks about himself?’

  You laughed with your eyes closed, silent. Nodded your head. ‘I think he does realise.’ There was so much affection in your voice. You shook your empty beer, like rattling a change tin. I drained the rest of mine and followed you to the bathroom. I got fresh beers from my bag and you cut lines on the vanity. That was when I told you how much I hated acting. How when I was younger I’d wanted to be a dancer, but I wasn’t flexible enough and everyone told me I had the face and the body for acting. I started to feel the MDMA hot in my arms and face and my sentences were rolling, rambling. ‘That doesn’t even mean anything, because if you don’t have the body for acting you can just not eat or work out or whatever.’ I told you how I got my first TV role straight out of school and how ironic it was that most people I went to drama school with were failing auditions while I got all the jobs and I didn’t even think I was any good.

  ‘Isn’t that exactly why you get them?’ you asked.

  ‘It is, it is!’

  I tried to steer the conversation to you, but you deflected. At most you offered me one or two comments before you’d shift back to me. I was high so I didn’t notice at the time; I just kept talking.

  We held hands in the back seat of the Uber on the way to my house, not having kissed yet. We giggled as we walked up my driveway. Sneaked through the house to my room, even though we knew we weren’t going to disturb Sarah because we’d left her at the party. We didn’t actually kiss until we landed on my bed. Our sex was like our conversation. You went down on me for a long time and when I tried to return the favour you stopped me. ‘Just relax,’ you said. We sobered up as we did it and afterwards kept talking. Silvery light was peeking in around the edges of my curtains
and you told me I needed to quit my job. ‘You can’t live your life saying you’ll get around to doing something you know will make you happy.’ You were lying on your back in my bed. Your hands were laced together on the centre of your chest and your eyes were closed. I traced a finger through your pale chest hairs. ‘You just have to do it,’ you finished.

  September

  I WAKE TO THE SOUND of the shower running. One and then the other, but almost simultaneously – apples being tipped from a bag – I remember what day it is, what I have to do today, all the facts of my life right now. It’s Saturday. I don’t have work today. Don’t know when I’ll have work again. I remember what I do have to do today and I think about the fact that the shower is running. There’s only one reason Sarah would be up and ready to go earlier than we have to on this Saturday – because she hasn’t slept. I’m still tired. My doona is comforting like the arms of a bad man, warm. I know I have to get up because of where we’re going this morning, and also because sleeping more won’t help this tiredness.

  I think about walking in on Sarah in the bathroom, but I’m sure I’ll vomit after I pee, so I go to the backyard and squat. I hitch my oversized t-shirt to my belly – it’s white and says Nobody really cares if you don’t go to the party in large print – and watch as my urine disappears into the grass and then eventually begins to pool there. I’ve just finished pissing when I begin to gag. I manage to repress it, but then I gag again and vomit. A small bit of bile, maybe half a cup, splatters on top of the foaming piss.

  Back inside I put the kettle on then lean against the kitchen sink, head tilted down, looking at my phone in my hand. Sarah opens the sliding door to the kitchen, one hand across her chest holding her bath towel.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

  I lift my head and look at her. Realising I’m not upset, just looking down, she turns to leave then almost immediately turns back and says, ‘Hi, by the way,’ before going to her room and closing the door. She looks pissed off and terrified. She definitely hasn’t slept.

  I brew coffee and the smell almost gets me. I turn quickly and hang my head over the sink. Small pieces of waterlogged onion and flat-leaf parsley crowd the plughole. I manage not to spew this time. I make Sarah a cup of coffee, very weak. I leave it outside her bedroom door and then I shower myself.

  WHEN WE LEAVE for the appointment, it takes ages just to back out of the driveway. It’s Saturday and people are going places, like to Bunnings, and whoever designed Thornbury was entirely shortsighted about how many people would eventually live here and how many of us would drive cars. Finally, there’s a break in traffic and we get going. I’m driving, because Sarah had amphetamines last night.

  ‘I’m such an idiot.’

  ‘You’re human: we’re all idiots.’

  ‘Is that a line from a play? You always say it now.’

  I don’t always say it now, but I did say it once recently when Sarah told me she was sleeping with her ex. And it is especially stupid for her to end up in this state today. A throwback to two years ago, when we were all on the fresher side of twenty-five and Sarah’s Facebook name was ‘Sissa’ and she took antidepressants and ecstasy on alternating days and cried to me and Annie about it a lot. I don’t say any of this, though.

  ‘I was only planning on getting really drunk, and then this girl in the toilet offered me a pinga and she was pretty so I just took it. Do you have any water?’

  I reach over with my left arm and flick open the glove box. There’s a plastic bottle, half full. It’s probably very old, most likely given to me on a set.

  Sarah has a sip then exhales. She looks sweaty and tired, like she’s run a marathon. She looks like shit.

  ‘She probably would’ve hooked up with me,’ she continues, ‘but then she was telling me about her shithead boss and then I was helping her draft an email to him and then we sent the email.’

  I’ve often wondered in the past year, since Sarah cleaned herself up somewhat, how I used to manage this. Annie and I would tell each other we were such good people, such selfless friends, to deal with her cycle of going on a bender, crying about her life, showering, repeat. And now I remember it – the joy of this version of her. She’ll cry herself to sleep tonight. I’ll have to soothe her, lie about it not being that bad, how it’s understandable … whatever she wants to hear. But Sarah is the only person I know who would get high and help draft a stranger’s email to their boss. Laughing now, I’m reminded that I’m not a big person, and that I love her.

  ‘I feel awful.’ She pulls her denim jacket over her head and slides down in her seat.

  ‘Look, your baby probably had a sick one last night, getting high, and now it’s coming down and it wants to kill itself. You’re, like, the best mum ever.’

  I turn the radio up and we spend the rest of the drive trying to find a station that plays good music this early on a Saturday. Sarah says, ‘I hate this song,’ and I change the station. And again, and again. Eventually we arrive without having found one.

  We get a park on the street directly in front of the building. In most circumstances this would feel lucky, but luck in this situation feels ominous.

  ‘I can’t be bothered.’ Instead of unbuckling her seatbelt, Sarah slides even further down in her seat, as though she’s trying to slip out of view of anyone in the building.

  I switch the engine off and turn to face her. ‘You’re going to go in there and then it’ll be over and we’ll go home.’

  I skip the part where her uterus is vacuumed.

  THERE’S NOBODY HERE. We stand on one side of a glass door, through which I can see a standard waiting room. Padded chairs and ugly patterned carpet. No children’s play area, like in other doctors’ surgeries. There’s a desk, but no woman with a name badge behind it, and a single closed door, which I assume leads to the appointment rooms. I hit the doorbell on the intercom again and again, but nothing happens.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ says Sarah. ‘Let’s leave.’

  ‘What? And you’ll just have a baby?’

  Immediately I put my arm around her, regretting my bluntness.

  Eventually a receptionist appears. I see her notice that Sarah is crying.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ she asks as she unlocks the glass door to let us in.

  ‘Yeah.’ I don’t know what else to say. Don’t worry, she just had pingas last night and she hasn’t slept. The tears aren’t about the abortion – we’re pro-choice. ‘Sarah Burns.’

  We take a seat in the waiting area as the woman goes behind the reception desk and begins typing. Eventually she prints something out and leaves again. I realise she’s dressed like a nurse.

  ‘She’s on reception and she’s a nurse,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe the receptionist is hungover and called in sick.’ Sarah has her eyes closed, her head leaning back against the wall. It looks like she’s steeling herself.

  ‘Maybe the receptionist is the woman from the toilets last night. Maybe it’s the boss here you emailed.’

  Sarah scrunches her face – a bit of a laugh, a bit of a cry.

  When the nurse–receptionist reappears and says, ‘Miss Burns?’, Sarah looks at me. Any resolve she’d felt moments ago has disappeared; she looks as confident as a guinea pig.

  ‘After this, we get to go home,’ I tell her. I’m talking to her like she’s a child, but she doesn’t object.

  She sighs, stands. I reach for her hand, squeeze it. ‘Let me know if you need me.’ We both know she won’t be able to.

  This is the first time I’ve ever been to an abortion clinic and yet when Sarah told me weeks ago that she was pregnant I was surprised at the knowledge I had somehow acquired without ever needing it. I knew abortions were four hundred bucks, but eight hundred if you want to go under. I knew that you should definitely go under. I knew there were two places in Melbourne to get them. And now I’m sitting here and Sarah is getting an abortion and suddenly I realise I have no idea how long this will take. An hour? Tw
o? Five or ten minutes? I think about looking it up but don’t, because I don’t want to freak out when it takes way longer or shorter than it’s meant to. I wait and try really hard not to think about the time I played a swimmer who had to get a backyard abortion in order to compete in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. I remember stripping down to my undies side-stage so the costume department could scrub fake blood from my legs in the quick-change. There was fake blood down to my ankles. I don’t think about this at all.

  SARAH SLEEPS AND I promise her I will stay home in case anything happens. I vow to myself I’ll have the house cleaned and dinner cooked when she wakes, but we only have bread and corn and I can’t go out to get more food without leaving her and I can’t do any real cleaning without making a lot of noise. I wipe dust from the leaves of our houseplants and scrub a dark green ink stain of wilted spring onion from the bottom of the vegetable crisper. My phone tells me it’s twenty-six degrees today, hotter than it’s been in ages. It feels too hot for early spring. I don’t actually remember the temperature of this time last year, but I know that if it was this warm a year ago we’d be in the park. I can picture what Edinburgh Gardens must be like right now – a throng of male and female mullets, bikes, eskies, dogs.

  I close all the blinds and turn off the lights, keeping the house dark and cool, like we do in the middle of summer. I lie on the couch and wait until I’m needed for something, I don’t know what.

  Eventually I wake to the sound of the shower, just like I did this morning. I sit up on the couch, uncomfortable, unused to sleeping on my back. I reach for my phone on the windowsill and see it’s 7 p.m. I boil the kettle then take two cups of tea to Sarah’s room and place them either side of her bed. Before I get in, I lift the doona to check there’s no blood on the sheets, which there isn’t. When she returns, I’m horrified for a few seconds at how bad she looks, before I remember she didn’t sleep last night and she looks about the same as she usually does after a bender – like she’s aged ten years overnight. Sarah is one of the most beautiful people I know, except when she’s hungover. She has pale skin that looks like porcelain when she powders it but translucent when she hasn’t slept. Her red hair is long and thick, but it knots quickly if left unbrushed. Her dark eyebrows are striking when she’s made-up but look drawn on, caricatured, when she’s not. Her countenance is much like her moods – ugly–beautiful, hot–cold.