Miss Rachael took centre stage amid much shushing and whispering both from the parents and the kids.
“Thanks to all the parents who have taken time out of their day to come and watch this performance. The kids have been practising their hearts out, and have a wonderful song prepared for you which you may have heard a few times before.”
The group tittered at the small joke. Evie remained stony face. She didn’t fit in scenes like this. They always reminded her of who she had been maybe who she still was. The discomfort of difference and judgment clung to her skin.
In the background she caught sight of Chris’s family – his mum Rosie and his dad, standing next to the snack table. G stood close by. He caught her eye and smiled, she smiled in return, and her stomach seized involuntarily. There was something about him which had a kinetic effect on her body. It was strange, after a lifetime of using her body only for transactions, that someone could still have that impact on her.
Maybe it was the first time someone had.
She looked back at the stage, shaking the thought from her mind. It was ridiculous to think that way. Attraction didn’t exist in her vocabulary. Love barely did – and only when it came to loving Tilley. Now she was only capable of moving forward, of loving Tilley fiercely, yes, but that was it. She didn’t need anything more or anything less.
The kids had begun their rendition of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. An assault to the ears. A series of kids dressed up as reindeers pulled Santa about in a cardboard sleigh. Rudolf’s nose periodically lit up, and the kids jumped and clapped at odd periods during the song – out of sync, unbalanced and incredibly loud.
She felt a smile spread across her face at their unparalleled joy and for a moment — and quite unexpectedly — she thought she might cry. Her throat constricted and her nose felt clogged. She blinked back tears. There was something about that limitless happiness and delight which made her feel glee and sadness all at the same time.
The kids wrapped up with some more stamping and yelling, and the parents shot to their feet. Thunderous applause rocked the hall.
Tilley broke free from the stage and ran in her direction, a broad grin on her face. She wrapped her arms around Evie’s torso and buried her face in her stomach.
“Did you see me? Did you see me?” she yelled excitedly over the din.
“Of course – and you were so good!” Evie declared.
“I was, wasn’t I? And didn’t I stand out with the pink tutu? Everyone else was wearing red, white and green. Silly them!” her small face took on an expression of mock horror, like it were inconceivable that they should all be wearing the same colours.
“Wait here, I have to go talk to Chris!” she yelled, pulling away from her and racing in his direction.
Alone again, Evie experienced an awkward moment. She didn’t know anyone here – other than Chris’s family, and she was quite sure she wasn’t the type of parent that other parents had conversations with. She didn’t drive in the car pool, or take the kids to swimming, or even know how to bake anything.
Mirela appeared in her field of vision. Lunar faced, dark hair unruly. Instantly, she felt uncomfortable.
“How are you?” Mirela said, enveloping her in a thick hug. Her large breasts virtually suffocating her.
“I’m good,” she managed. Momentarily Evie wondered why the touching and hugging seemed to come so easily to everyone else besides her. Why were they ok with pressing the flesh of a virtual stranger against their own? It seemed overly intimate.
“You never came past my house again,” Mirela said, eyebrow raised, never one to skirt around an issue.
“I’ve been really busy ... you know settling in ... and with dad and all,” she lied. She hadn’t been busy at all. She had spent the last three weekends at the beach with Evie and watching reruns of Friends on Netflix. And she most definitely hadn’t seen her father. Not at all.
“How is he?” Mirela said, a concerned look fixed to her face.
Evie stared at her for a moment. Firstly, because she wasn’t quite sure, and secondly because she always struggled with these friendly and seemingly concerned questions. Mirela had been one of her closest friends in high school, granted she had never been an open book, but surely Mirela would have pieced two and two together. Surely, she should have realised that her father had never really been a father at all.
“He’s dying,” she said finally.
Mirela stroked her arm in a there-there fashion. For some reason, the gesture irritated her.
“He should really get it over with and just die so I can live the rest of my life in peace,” the words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Mirela’s eyes widened, like she had reached out and slapped her. Her mouth opened and closed on several occasions like she was some sort of exotic fish. Finally she recovered.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said.
They were the wrong words.
“Are you surprised by that?” Evie continued, the hostility spilling forward. There was something about her old friend’s face. It was too familiar. Way too familiar. It took her back – too fast to that time.
“A little, yes. I mean I’ve never heard you speak like this before,” she was flustered and Evie should have stopped but she couldn’t. It was like something within her had ripened, and was threatening to spill out and cover them all in shades of red and black.
“Well it’s because I couldn’t. Nobody wanted to hear about the truth. Nobody wanted to hear that he was a bloody tyrant. That he put my brother in hospital the night of our school formal. Remember how I wasn’t there?” she prompted. The memory was fresh in her mind, regurgitated earlier in the morning in the shower.
Again more opening and closing of the mouth. “You were at the after party,” she spluttered out.
“Yeah, because I had to screw Craig to get him to drive me there. I couldn’t stay at the hospital. Benny was in surgery, he had a hole in his sternum, a broken cheek bone, and his knee was shot to bits. Dad kicked him with his steel-capped shoes when he got home from work. Mum just cowered in the corner. She was afraid for her own life – we all were.” People were looking at her, maybe she was talking too loudly. She wasn’t sure. All she could see was a kaleidoscope of memories that nobody else wanted to remember because it was too painful. Because it was easier to remember things bathed in a shade of pink.
“I didn’t know that,” Mirela said, shaking her head – like the doctor had on that fateful night.
“Of course you didn’t. Nobody wanted to hear the truth -they much preferred a barely veiled lie. That Benny fell down the stairs, for example ... strange it took him six weeks to recover, and he was never quite the same, was he?”
People were looking in their direction. Lots of them. Mirela looked panicked. Evie had the distinct sensation that she had lost it. Like when you’ve been drinking and you suddenly realise you’re acting like a lunatic, only she hadn’t been drinking.
“Hi,” G suddenly said, looming into her field of vision. He waved a hand at her like she might be deaf and gestures were the only way to communicate.
She wondered how much he had heard. She shouldn’t care. But she did. There was something awfully embarrassing about sharing details like that about yourself. More than embarrassing. Devastating. And she didn’t want to share them with G. Not at all.
“Hi,” she managed.
“How about that performance?” he said, dark eyes kind. Too soft, it made her realise he’d heard most of it.
She smiled through clenched teeth. “It was something.”
“Something else.” He added with a wink.
Mirela loitered in the background. Not knowing how to conclude their interrupted dialogue. It hadn’t been a dialogue, it had been more like a declaration.
“Chris has been practising for weeks,” G continued – either oblivious to the awkwardness or committed to forging forward.
“So has Tilley,” she said rubbing her f
orehead. She wasn’t quite sure what had come over her. She looked at her shoes for a moment. A cheap pair of open toed heels she had picked up at a factory outlet in Alexandria. Her toenails were painted a particularly awful shade of salmon. She wiggled her toes for a moment, like being lost in the detail might bring her back to reality and stop her from derailing.
When she looked up Mirela was gone. She’d simply shimmered into the distance like a mirage. For a moment she wondered if she had been at all there to begin with. But she had. People didn’t like to hear the truth. It clashed with their own constructed version of reality. The one they felt safe in.
“You ok?” G asked again with those soft eyes.
“Oh Christ! Would you stop looking at me like that? It makes me feel like I’ve got a disease!” she rolled her eyes at him.
“Well, you kind of had a melt-down,” he smiled. His voice was beautiful. A lilting tone, which rose and fell in all the right places. It made her think he knew how to sing.
“Minor,” she corrected.
“Hmmm I don’t know if you could say that. There was some yelling involved,” he raised his eyebrows at her and grinned. Why did this man have to be so goddamn handsome? And funny?
“Well sometimes you have to lose your shit.”
“I get you.”
“Why are you even here anyway? Is this your thing? Coming to random children’s Christmas events?” she gestured about the horrendously festooned hall. People were still casting their eyes in her direction.
“I came to support Chris.”
“Did you?”
“What do you want me to say? That I came because I was hoping to see you here?” he joked. Her heart stopped momentarily. She kind of hoped it was the truth. Even the words said in jest made her feel warm.
She shook her head – suddenly inept. Kindness and sincerity were foreign to her. She wasn’t quite sure how to react.
“Why don’t we go get a drink or lunch or something?”
Was he asking her out? She wasn’t sure. For a woman who was remarkably attractive, she had never really been part of a romance.
“I should really get Tilley,” she dodged.
“But they have to go back to school.”
Unsuccessful. If she had wanted to she would have come up with another excuse. Another boundary for him to get past. She would have made it unsurmountable. But she didn’t.
“Yeah, ok.”
21
Your dad was a bad fella?
(2017, Redfern)
He took her to the Dock on Redfern Street, a shabby-chic pub that had been there for a lifetime. Back in her day it had been more shabby than chic. The walls were red velvet and made her feel like she was inside a bordello or a large uterus. Thinking of both those things set her on edge.
G seemed to know people. They tapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. They shared a few pleasantries. It made her think he was the type of guy that people liked. The type who built up relationships and knew people.
She didn’t know anyone at all. Not here, not anywhere really. The only people she knew were ghosts, and that unrepentant piece of toast at the hospice.
She ordered a pinot noir and a fancy sandwich and watched him carefully. There was something awfully familiar about G even though he should be everything that was unfamiliar to her — from his skin colour, to his ... world.
“So you want to tell me what happened in there?” He folded his arms across the table and leaned in, he was too close to her. His dark skin glowed. There was a tiny piece of hyper pigmentation near his temple shaped like the size of a thumb. It made her want to press her fingers to it.
It was raining outside. Slow, consistent rain. The type of weather which made you want to sit inside and talk about things with people who were close to your heart. He was a spider of sorts, weaving a web across that very organ. An intricate pattern that only he could understand. For all the walls she had built up in the past, she had let him in.
“Mirela and I went to school together. We were sort of like best friends. Kind of. I never told her about any of the stuff that happened at home. I used to hide out at her house when things were bad ... but I didn’t talk about it to anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because you become complicit in the secret. When you’re a kid you feel like somehow it’s your fault. Maybe you always think that,” she said.
“Dirty linen never gets aired ... or whatever they say. I get it.”
“But somehow you always think that people kind of know ... and they do. They just pretend they don’t because it makes them uncomfortable.”
He watched her with his dark eyes. She avoided them for a second. She’d once heard that if you stared at someone dead in the eyes for ten seconds and had an intimate conversation with them you were at risk of falling in love with them. Some sort of love scientist had figured it out. She didn’t need ten seconds. Instead she focused on his hands. His wide flat hands and thin fingers. There were lines bunched up against them that told a story.
“Your dad was a bad fella?” he asked suddenly, his voice a low baritone. No preamble. Just that.
“Yeah. He was pretty bad ... and he made everything around him bad. My mum, my brother, me – we became small people. Shadows really.”
Ephemeral. Transient. Dead.
“You have a brother?”
She skirted the question. Not Benny. Never Benny.
“Yeah – we’re not close anymore.”
“And your mother?”
“She passed, she had cancer. But she was sick for a long time. Mentally. In the end she hadn’t left the house in years.”
Her mother and that blue robe, cowering in the kitchen.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t good.”
“And what about Tilley’s father. He still around?” Her eyes darted up to his. Why was he asking? She tried to discern his expression, but it remained playful and soft.
“Nah, we weren’t really together. We weren’t in a relationship or anything. I’ve never been good with things like that ...” she trailed off. Complete overshare. Why was she telling this man so much?
“Relationships?”
“Yeah.”
“Seems hard to believe.” He smiled that handsome half grin.
“Why? Because I’m pretty?” she said grimly. Pretty girls were nothing. They were told to sit down, shut up and do what they were told. To never have an opinion. Men didn’t love pretty girls, they were just objects, for them to do whatever they pleased with.
“No .. because you’re kind.”
“Kind?” she laughed.
“Yeah – you’re pretty of course, but you’re kind too ... and a little fierce. Both at the same time. It’s an interesting combination.”
She smiled, embarrassed. She felt herself blush.
“Don’t worry, I’ve never been good with relationships either,” he said ruefully.
“You been married?” She asked – what a direct question, so unlike her.
“Yeah and divorced. I was married a whole six months,” he shifted in his seat like it still made him uncomfortable talking about it. She wasn’t surprised.
“What happened?”
He looked up at the ceiling and laughed, like he was still trying to figure it out. “I was a different person back then. We were a terrible match. Neither of us understood what a relationship was supposed to be. Sometimes you grow up with shit role models, and you think love is all about the fights and the drama ...”
“What do you think now?”
He stared at her for a moment too long.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven ...
One second over the limit — she felt her heart seize.
“Love. Friendship. Magic ... I don’t know, I guess I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“I never took you as such a poet,” she scoffed.
“I’m no poet. I’m a fighter, always have been. Always will
be.”
“Maybe they’re the same thing.”
“Maybe they are.” He put his hand to his mouth. The thinker considering her statement. He had beautiful thick lips, the kind that begged to be kissed. She looked away. Don’t think about him in that way Evie. Don’t you even dare.
“So what’s your story?” she shifted the topic away awkwardly.
“What do you mean?” followed by a rueful smile.
“You know what’s your story?” she said taking a sip of her Pinot for courage.
“What makes you think I’ve got a story?” there was something guarded about his flippant response. She knew the feeling. Concealing was akin to not feeling.
“Everyone’s got a story,” she continued. She knew she didn’t have the right to probe. After all, she was the queen of guarded. But she wanted to know more about him, she was curious. She wanted to understand him, find out what made him tick. Get under his skin. He looked down at his beer, and rotated the glass a few times in a circle, as though he were considering whether or not he should respond. His mouth drew into a line and then the words tumbled out, uncertain.
“Well I was a fighter, a boxer to be exact. Only thing I know really,” he trailed off and cast his eyes towards the ceiling. Someone had once told her that people tended to look up when they were about to lie. It was a sure sign that the next words out of their mouth were going to be a fib. “It didn’t work out.” He cast his eyes back down. “So now I just run the gym in town and I train other guys to fight.”
He chewed his lip, and then took a sip of beer. He wiped his hands on his pants like he had sweated through it.
“I don’t know much about boxing,” she finally said. “Well not professional boxing at least. I know more than enough about the fighting that goes on at home.” She gulped, but continued. Something about the afternoon had granted them a new found intimacy. It stretched over them like an invisible glove. Within that space she felt like she could speak, and he could too.
“It all seems a little ... brutal to me.”
She wanted to say violent, but she didn’t at the same time. She didn’t want to associate violence with him, not at all, not anything about her old past.
Pretty Girls Page 10