‘Where’s Calvin?’ he asked after some time.
‘Birthday party. Staying overnight. His father’s in Australia,’ she said dreamily.
Now that was interesting. Very interesting. ‘Australia?’
‘Yeah. He sent a platypus last year.’ She giggled. ‘Platypus catchymus.’
And that was funny. That was really good. ‘Catchymus.’ He stretched his arms to the ceiling and let them flop. ‘Murray must’ve stopped farting around with the mower. No hallelujahs.’
She was playing hair games, one hand twisting and rolling between drags on the joint. ‘He goes home for a shower,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back later.’
‘Why?’
She leaned forward, picked up a pot-holder shaped like a pig, kissed its pink padded haunch. ‘Rob?’
Perhaps it was working this time, he seemed to be mellowing out. That was the phrase. Mellowing out. Perhaps his previous tries had been duff stuff. ‘Yeah?’
The marijuana was smoothing out the wrinkles of his brain—the sulci? the gyri? were flat as your hat, flatter. He must look them up. And Bloomfield. And Chomsky. But why.
She was beautiful. ‘Yeah?’ he said again.
‘I want to tell you something.’
Dope-laden confidences take time. He listened, absorbed it into his cleansed mind and stared at the pig’s haunch while she told him about Aunt’s papers, how there were masses of them, photographs which meant nothing, letters, piles of the stuff. And lists. Endless lists. One headed ‘Apples’. She pulled a yellowed piece of paper from the drawer in the dresser and read. ‘“Rhode Island Greening, Easopus, Spitzerberg, Snow Apple, Sheepnose, Yellow Bellflower.” Why did she keep that? It’s so sad.’
‘They’re good names‚’ he said. ‘I’d keep a list like that.’
Emmeline shook her head. ‘But there are hundreds of different lists, well dozens. She must have gone through the house from memory. Where she’d lived before here; cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer.’ Emmie peered at another one. ‘Pots, pans, skillets, jelly bags, waffle irons, trivets. What’s a trivet?’
He couldn’t be bothered, waved a hand, handed back the roach.
She inhaled deeply, sighed it out. ‘There’s nothing wrong with standing on your head,’ she said, ‘as long as you don’t talk about it at parties.’
He agreed, but there were more interesting things. ‘You’re wreathed,’ said Rob happily, ‘wreathed in smoke.’
Dead leaves hung orange and green from the cherry tree outside the window. One fell, another orange one with a bite out of it drifted down. Actually drifted, lay on the ground.
‘Look at that‚’ he said.
‘What?’
‘A leaf.’
She was unimpressed. ‘But why did she do that? Why did she make the lists?’ Emmie leaned across the table. ‘You know what I reckon. She was stitching on her past, that’s what. Her hero was Calvin Coolidge.’ Emmie held up the limp roach. ‘I’m sick of this. Want it?’
He shook his head. ‘Why Calvin Coolidge?’
‘He came from Vermont.’ She giggled. ‘And he didn’t talk much.’
It was very funny. He could see that. They laughed and laughed. Were happy. Couldn’t remember why they were laughing or what was funny or tragic or make any sense of either which did not matter at all.
He was staring at her, examining the way her limbs moved as though he had never seen her in his life before. As though she were some sort of miracle. He put out his hand.
‘Emmie …?’
She sat upright, shook her head to clear it. ‘No.’
She shuffled about in her pocket, produced an envelope. ‘Look. This is the important one. Read it.’
My dear Emmeline‚
I will be dead when you read this but that is all right by me and must be by you honey‚ and Calvin will keep you jumping.
Don’t go back to Vermont. It is a cold place. Your father was an attorney called Jackson Purdie. He is dead now. My family was in lumber. My grandmother stood by me and the things we have were hers. They were shipped out after she died. Also the money, the capital of which is intact but I have had to use the interest.
Mr Greenstone in Kilbirnie has the details.
You have been all my joy, and Calvin also.
Your loving Aunt.
PS. Be careful with the money. Mr Greenstone is a man of integrity.
‘What the hell does she mean, Rob?’
‘Just what she says. It’s perfectly clear.’
‘God in heaven, how can you be so hopeless?’ She shoved her face at him, her eyebrows inches from his. He put out a hand to touch one. She snatched her head away. ‘I don’t know who I am,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see? Aunt told me I was her sister’s child …’ She shoved the piece of paper at him again. ‘Read it! Doesn’t it sound here as though she was my mother?’
This was not the moment for important discussions. Robin was aware of that. He was stoned. His head was floating above his neck. ‘But you told me she was,’ he muttered. ‘When Calvin was born, you said.’
‘Oh yes I said. I’ve always thought so since I was about fifteen. Earlier, when kids whispered, I guessed. But why didn’t she say? Talk to me about it.’
‘It’s easy enough to find out. There must be a birth certificate.’
‘That’s not the point. I wanted my mother to tell me.’ She snatched back the letter. ‘Think man, think.’
Murray stood at the door. His white T-shirt was ironed. He was showered, shaved and smelled of Brut. ‘Bit of a problem there‚’ he said. ‘He hasn’t got the equipment.’
‘Lawns look nice, Murray‚’ murmured Emmeline, restowing her letter and scrubbing her face on a tea towel.
‘You guys smoking dope?’
‘We were.’
Murray sat beside Emmeline and held out a hand.
Robin stood up. ‘Stay for a lasagne‚’ she said staring up at his face, her head bent back as though to a great height, a worm’s eye view of the departing.
‘No.’
Her head snapped upright. She held out one drooping gracious hand. ‘How’s Henry James?’ she said.
‘Dead.’
Nothing is more excluding than unshared laughter. ‘Henry James came from Baaston,’ she said. ‘I happen to know. He was a Boston Brahmin.’ She sucked the roach and handed it back to the lawn man.
Rob turned on his heel.
‘Braahmin,’ she yelled at his back. ‘Braahmin, y’dork.’
She rang a week later. Her voice was crisp and friendly. Emmeline never remained pissed off for long. Her occasional willy-willies of rage soon spiralled back to earth, all cheerfulness restored. She was buoyant as a float.
‘How’s Henry James?’ she said.
‘Still dead.’
The repetition of the laboured joke was typical, typical of her goading wanton bloody-minded silliness. Catchphrases, jokes, rags and tags of words and memories of no interest to anyone but herself churned beneath that hair and fell at random. Sometimes they hit the mark but by no means always. Emmeline was not concerned. Like Aunt, and indeed Murray, she pleased herself.
‘I never know why he fussed about all that social high-life stuff in England‚’ she said.
‘How do you know if you don’t read him?’
‘I have read him and I thought he was great but some of them went on too long.’
And suck on that. ‘He was afraid he might be bored at night‚’ he said.
The silence was brief. ‘Oh.’
‘Yes.’ He had meant to talk to her for hours the other night. To share with her his memories of Aunt, to support and comfort her without as much as a blink of the eye to indicate that he knew how she felt and that Time was the Great Healer. He did not know how she felt. Nobody knows how anybody feels. Ask a fish.
Also he wanted something. He wanted Alice O’Leary. Every memory, every nine-year-old’s glimpse of the 1969 house guest must be described for him. Murray’s scented prese
nce had finished that. Rob’s toes curled in remembered frustration.
‘Emmie, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’
‘Sure. Which reminds me. I’m going to hear Chainsaw. They’re on next week. Want to come?’
‘Emmie for heaven’s sake, I’m old.’
‘And I’m two years older. And a solo mother. And so was Aunt and I’m going to hear Chainsaw.’
Over-egging it as usual. Throttling the wisp of self-irony with excess. At least he laughed. ‘Come and have a meal first‚’ he said quickly. No woman other than Eileen had been to the flat since Lisa had died.
‘No. It won’t start till late. I’ll ask Bernie’s niece to have Fatso. We swap kids quite often. Come here about eight. I’ll be rehearsing till then.’
‘You’re sure you wouldn’t rather go to a movie?’
‘Get real, Raab,’ she said, the come-off-it smile still in her voice. He saw her on the tyre swing; a mocking bird, the shining cuckoo of the eastern suburbs. Grunge metal for God’s sake. He must be mad.
Eileen was pleased with herself, she told him when he rang. She had remembered both hares and rabbits this month. It was easy enough to remember the rabbits last thing at night at the end of the month but the hares next morning were more difficult, especially on your own. Her endless superstitions; salt thrown, ladders avoided, fingers crossed, puzzled him. Why bother when she was already watched over, guarded from on high with every hair of her head numbered.
Emmie had boned, rolled, chopped and tasted before blasting off to work.
‘She can get herself organised if she wants to,’ Eileen had admitted long ago.
And change the look of a place. In this case by climbing on the table to remove a bulb, to soften the light which fell on the beat-up chairs, the scrubbed table, the last cherry leaves in the jug in the middle. Miss Bowman had had branches of crab apple in the same grey jug, another time a scatter of lime-green elm flowers. Where had she found them? He had never seen an elm in Seatoun. Like Emmie she could produce things from nowhere. It was enough to make you believe in genetic heresies—inheritance of acquired characteristics, a gene for legerdemain, for the quick nick, the sleight of left hand over right for the creation of small visual treats, of transient scarcely noticed pleasures. Get it or don’t get it. I like it.
They talked about Calvin. What Calvin said, what Calvin did at the new day-care.
‘You didn’t tell me he’d changed.’
‘I didn’t?’ Her eyes were shadowed but he could see her mouth. He grinned back.
‘OK, OK. How long’s he been there?’
‘Not long. All I’ve heard so far is there’s no doors on the dunnies. This day and age, I suppose. Aunt would have hated that.’ The edges of her fingers were blurred by the candlelight. ‘And the next thing’ll be school. You know how I’d sum up Aunt and me? Cosy. Life was very cosy once I’d calmed down about men. I loved Aunt. Aunt loved me. We both loved Calvin.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘Cosiness. Who needs it?’
I didn’t mind it. And nor did Lisa who died alone with her thumb in her mouth the man said and that I will not believe.
She touched his hand. ‘Sorry. You’d think I’d learn, wouldn’t you. Shut up. Stop trying to play both Hamlet and the Clown. Think occasionally. “But when he thinks he fastens / his hand upon his heart.” Who’s that?’
‘Housman. He was an atheist. Buried apart from the rest.’
‘Not out of wedlock and over the wall like poor Sorrow Durby-field? We’ll be lined up in rows. But it was no joke then. Not in Vermont.’ Her face changed. ‘Or here. No joke at all. Don’t tell a soul, but I think it’s better with two. I don’t mean when the parents hate each other. Hell no. But other things being equal, as Murray would say.’
He picked up their plates and rinsed them in a stone sink the size of a horse trough, his back towards her, his hands busy.
‘Are you still seeing him?’
‘Of course.’ She seemed happy with the crass question. ‘Murray and I,’ said Emmeline, ‘are very close.’
He propped the plates on the wooden draining board, examined it. The gouged track beneath his finger was grey and furry with age. It reminded him of a long white-haired cactus called Something senilis. ‘No one could be close to Murray,’ he said.
She was all attention. ‘No?’
‘He has jumper leads in his car. He carries jumper leads. You remember that caravan George had before he shot through? It was out in the backyard by the whirligig.’ Rob’s arms demonstrated towels spinning, pyjamas whirling. ‘And you know what the guy did? He spent hours getting the levels right so he would know how to get the levels right when they went on holiday—and they never went! Or else he was banging on about pigeons. Or shooting through without a word. I bet he left after a meal.’
‘What’s this got to do with Murray?’
‘He was his father.’
She looked at him with contempt, a slow lip-curl of distaste.
‘Ah. Fathers. Sins of.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Then what the hell did you mean?’ she said and put her head in her hands. Her hair was too near the flame. He gathered it for safety and held it behind her neck.
‘He’s a shit, Emmie,’ he said. ‘I promise you.’
She snatched her hair back. ‘I don’t find him so. He’s very kind to me.’
‘He’s ten years younger than you. At least.’
‘Jesus. What is this? And what about you! You were twelve years older than Lisa.’
‘That was …’ No. It was not different. He held out his hands, palms upwards in defeat.
‘Robin, Robin, Robin.’ A dying cadence, the mocking self-awareness of an out gay admonishing a closet queer filled her voice. ‘Watch it sailor,’ snapped Emmeline. She stood up. ‘Come on, time we went.’
Once again, Murray had sidetracked the conversation, deflected the course and got him offside. He didn’t care for Murray.
He had been to the place once before. Some kids from the lab had had a twenty-first there a few years ago; had decorated the hall with streamers, turned up the disco, blown up the balloons and got down, man. There had been a few parents present, men with polished faces and women with cropped hair who danced and danced and yelled and screamed and had fun. It must have cost a fortune. ‘I thought kids didn’t have this sort of thing now,’ said Robin.
Lisa had looked puzzled. ‘Why not?’
‘Well I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘It’s …’
‘You’re no good at fun,’ she said.
The place had changed hands. Definitely and decisively the ambience had changed. Gone were the bright lights, the starkness for renting. The smell of dope greeted them as they stood in the queue. Men and women slipped in and out of the semi-darkness to racketing blasts of sound from the hall. A long-haired woman in front of them was explaining to her friend that she had not minded licking the whipped cream off the male stripper’s chest. Not in the slightest. What she had objected to, and still did, was being bottom. She was always top. Had always been a top person and always would be.
Emmeline touched her shoulder. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Where were you?’
Robin put out his hand, gave a quick tug of her wide trousers.
The woman showed no surprise. She flicked back her hair to explain. ‘Ladies’ night. New club just opened. I’ve got a card somewhere.’ She burrowed in a drawstring Indian bag. ‘Here. Have fun.’
‘Great. Thanks.’ Emmie touched the bag. ‘Do you find the mirror bits drop off?’
‘No.’
‘Mine did.’
‘What’d you do?’
‘Nothing.’ They laughed. Emmie admired the electric-blue lace stockings. They were stockings? Yeah. Her friend’s galumphing steel bracelet and Emmeline’s trousers were also admired, made part of their instant rapport.
Robin watched in silence. The woman could just as easily have taken a poke at Emmie. But no, they had a base.
Like gay men, they shared a freemasonry, an outlook. A gender bias. But presumably so did heterosexual guys. The thought did not comfort him.
Emmie was back on the stripper track. ‘Was it, well you know? I mean it wasn’t for real, obviously.’
‘God, no. But it was pretty …’ The rings tossed. ‘Well, like you said. I mean otherwise I wouldn’t have minded being bottom. If it hadn’t sort of seemed real.’
Emmeline nodded. ‘I guess not.’ She took his arm. ‘This is Rob.’
‘Hi.’
Emmeline turned to him, her eyes glinting like a child’s with a treat. ‘Wasn’t that great? You couldn’t come. Ladies only.’ She cheered up. ‘Perhaps that’s only Fridays. I’ll ask.’ But the stockings had disappeared.
They queued again to get their wrists stamped Paid.
His childhood doctor had had a Good Patient stamp for kids. At the end of a visit Dr Brabson, his teeth wrecked by pipes and insufficient dental care, had leaned forward. ‘Hold out your hand, Robin.’ He wondered when it had stopped, when the award had become sissy, a shameful secret to be hidden from the other kids instead of skited about. Five, he supposed. Or six. Not much older than Calvin. It seemed pretty young.
A Maori guy beside them had a ring on each of the fingers on his right hand and none on the left. A woman clung to his arm, her crutch barely covered by a pelmet of leather. In the smoky half darkness you could not tell where her tights ended and the teetering heels began. A babe in invisible boots.
‘You do know,’ teased Emmeline, her body locked against his in imitation of another woman eating her man alongside, ‘that “Elvis” is an anagram of “Lives”?’
He grinned, tightened his arm around her. A man and woman shoved past them. Both heads of tough grey hair were tugged into pony tails, both wore black T-shirts stamped with large golden lions’ heads. Her chest thrust out more than his but not by much. They were together. Swingers. They had probably arrived on a Harley Davidson, he stiff-armed, her body hugging tight into the corners. They would not grow old. No siree. A black man in turquoise socks and blue jandals danced alone, one protruding ebony toe beating the rhythm.
The House Guest Page 13