by Kate Ryan
Diane was always good at remembering details. ‘Is Matty still gardening? What is Eli thinking of doing when he finishes school?’ She had heard his history teacher Jill Browning saying that he was doing very well. ‘And how is your mother? Is she still selling her jewellery? Involved in the Co-op? Is she still making her pots? I saw some of her things at TJs. A few months ago. That little exhibition. I thought they were quite lovely. She’s so wonderfully creative and adventurous.’ To Ali such statements were like fingernails down a blackboard. She had the unbearable feeling that in her teaching job her mother was spying on her, on everyone, and she was thrown into protectiveness of Aggie from Diane’s transparent patronage.
But even Jessie’s contempt for Aggie didn’t stop her nodding vigorously. She would smile her chipped, electric smile and accept more of Diane’s chicken pie, her orange and almond cake. She never said much, food being the main thing. No haphazard vegetarian diet there. David’s steak and chips, Diane’s beef satays, her forays into French provincial, Italian, Thai, the table with its cutlery and flowers, the glasses of good red, the jug with water, ice and lemon for ‘the children’, the policy of doing the dishes after every meal — all these mundane things would have been novel and wonderful to Jessie.
Ali would often find Jessie scrounging for food when she turned up at her place. She was always starving, and there never seemed to be enough to eat. Sometimes she found stale Cruskits that Eli had hidden among the saucepans and forgotten about. She would raise one in the air in triumph, crunching another one in her mouth at the same time, and they would plaster the rest with rancid Western Star and Vegemite — if Cal had remembered to buy it. Aggie was opposed to its high salt content. Once in a blue moon there might be an oaty slice — too dense and heavy — made with gritty wholemeal flour in a fit of maternal nurture, though even that never lasted long. More often there was the bread, white and spongy, that Cal brought back from his part-time bakery job, and to which Aggie objected. ‘Darling, it’s terrible processed rubbish.’
‘It’s free,’ Cal would say, pulling a slice out of the plastic bag, folding it and stuffing it in his mouth. Jessie and Ali peeled off the crusts and rolled the bread into balls or squeezed it between their fingers. Sometimes they pelted each other with it as they chased each other round the garden, receiving no objection from Aggie.
It was not until she was twenty-two that Ali read somewhere that John Lennon had been fascinated with The Tibetan Book of the Dead, just as Aggie had been. Scores of people reading it, looking for something but also doing what everyone else was doing. It was a trend, something like Ali’s classmates reading Freaky Friday in Year 7 or watching Sons and Daughters. And then she realised that Aggie hadn’t been so very original after all. But she saw now the fakery in Jessie’s harshness about Aggie, and the longing behind it too. It took a lot for children to hate their parents.
Ali’s parents took them to the surf club at Merimbula. Coke and fish and chips followed by banana splits, the delicious freeze on her teeth. Diane and David sipped wine and gazed at the view, Diane turning a blind eye while they ran off to play pinnies. Bare feet on spongy blue carpet, the metallic buzz of sugar at Ali’s temples, laughing and laughing, the hum of diners, the crying of babies, cutlery rattling, the ping and flash of Space Invaders. Ecstasy.
Diane was waiting for her when she got back. ‘A cup of tea, darling? I’m sure you need one.’
Ali nodded.
David was asleep again. ‘He sleeps so much now,’ Diane said, rubbing a little at her eyes. ‘Sometimes morning and afternoon. Like a baby. It must be exhausting, I suppose, trying to resist the loss. Like a second childhood but in reverse.’ She turned to get the cups. ‘I’m not sure how much longer I can manage,’ she said.
This revelation of weakness was a shock. ‘I’m sorry that I’m so far away.’
‘You have your life to lead, darling. I understand that. If I need help, I can afford it.’
They drank tea in the kitchen, sun across the table and a vase of wild roses placed just so.
‘How are you, darling?’
Ali shrugged. ‘Aggie said I went back to Mumbulla. On the night. I don’t remember that.’
Diane looked down, fiddled with her teacup, and nodded. ‘Ah … yes, you did. You never spoke about it, and you slept for a long time afterwards. The counsellor said we shouldn’t mention it, shouldn’t try to get you to remember more than you did. And you never brought it up. We were very worried. But then we worried from the beginning about you and Jessie. She had such a lot to contend with, and you seemed to throw your entire lot in with her. She relied on you so much, of course, but you relied on her too. Perhaps she wasn’t the easiest friend to have.’
Ali listened. This was what her mother said. ‘And truth be told, I suppose I felt a little hurt. By ten or eleven you were obsessed with Jessie. You stopped telling me anything. I became persona non grata. And you didn’t bother with other friends. We worried about that, your intensity with her.
‘I went with Aggie to the hospital, you know, that next day, for the meeting. I flew in from Sydney and drove without stopping. She asked me to. I don’t know why. The terrible man she was with at that time — what was his name?’
‘Claudio.’
‘Yes. Anyway, he wouldn’t come with her — frightened of hospitals, Aggie said. Cal and Eli came but not Matty. That scene — I’ll never forget it. The surgeon, the intern, the nurses, I don’t know who they all were. All of them sitting in that room, saying her brain was very damaged, saying she would never walk, saying she would probably die. Aggie was wailing. She clutched my hand so hard that the next day David noticed I had little bruises. I just sat there. I didn’t know what to do.’
44
One day, a couple of weeks after she got home, Ali went to pick up Tam from Bettany’s place. She walked up the steps of the flats. There was a broken window on the first landing and a child’s plastic sandal. On the next floor a window overlooked the street, its ledge covered with pot plants. Ali walked up the next flight. She smelled fish frying and looked around at the numbers until she found Bettany’s flat. She knocked. Some Katy Perry-ish song was audible, laughter and footsteps. Then Bettany was at the door with Tam beside her, frowning. ‘Not yet, Mum,’ she hissed. ‘We’re in the middle of a game.’ They ran off, and Bettany’s mother appeared. ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling. ‘Come in.’
She was a small, round woman, not much like either of her daughters. Her greying blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her face was a little acne-scarred, her eyes big and blue. She could have been forty-five or fifty-five. She led Ali through into the small kitchen.
There was a Lost Dogs’ Home calendar on one wall, and a small table covered with a pile of women’s magazines against another. ‘Coffee, tea? Have a seat.’
Ali hesitated and then she felt tired, as if a cup of tea was exactly what she needed. She sat down, and Terri got a packet of cream biscuits out of the cupboard, opened it and put four on a plate. Ali could hear the girls laughing from down the hall. ‘No waay,’ Tam was saying, and Bettany was laughing and laughing. Terri unplugged the kettle and took it over to the sink.
When the kettle boiled, she made the tea and talked about moving from Shepparton, and how this was the only place she could get, and how her ex had hurt his back at work — he was in construction — and how they’d split up some time after, it had put such a strain on things, him not working for a while. He was getting back to it now and he wasn’t too bad really, but she wasn’t going back — no thank you! — but he came down and saw the girls every other weekend, and she had her mother and sister down here, though her mother was getting old now, seventy-seven, but still she got quite a bit of support from her sister, and it was nice to see her mum more regularly. Bettany had been playing up since the split with Brian, though, and Megan spent all her time on the internet — and wasn’t it so hard to control? She
’d given up — but Bettany was really glad to have met Tam.
Ali heard herself agreeing in a mindless kind of way. Tam was happy about meeting Bettany too. ‘They both like a bit of adventure,’ she said, a wry nod to the school camp debacle, though she didn’t know what Terri thought about that.
She didn’t respond, just a smile, and then again the stream of words, comfortingly boring. How she liked the suburb and the school, and wasn’t it great to have the market nearby, and how they were planning to go to the coast, down Rye way, on the long weekend. Her sister had a beach house. It might be hard to drag Megan along, but maybe Tam would like to come?
Whatever Ali had imagined of Bettany’s family, it was not this ordinariness. And she said yes, she was sure Tam would love to go. She drank her tea and listened, and there they were, two women with very little in common except that their daughters were friends.
Jessie’s ideas usually hadn’t come to much, so how could she have known? There was the plan to hitchhike to Sydney to see AC/DC, half-heartedly standing by as Jessie barrelled up to a driver who was loading beer into the back of his truck in front of the supermarket. ‘You headed for Sydney?’ she said. He didn’t look at her or take the cigarette out of his mouth, a closed-down expression on his face. ‘Canberra,’ he said, climbing into his cab.
Jessie jiggled her arms around and stepped back. ‘Know anyone who’s going to Sydney tomorrow?’
‘Nup,’ the driver said. He slammed the door, turned on the engine, and wound down his window. A nasal country whine started up on the radio. He drove away.
Jessie frowned slightly and scratched at the back of her sweaty hair. ‘Couldn’t stand going all the way to Sydney with that arsehole. Did you hear that? Willy Nelson — I mean, Jesus!’
Ali didn’t know why she thought she could have changed anything if she hadn’t turned her back on her, but that’s what she believed. She was in a playground with Tam years later and she heard it, some joke between mothers. They were laughing, and the cold fear was coming down again. Don’t let her out of your sight.
45
One night in autumn, when Tam was at Graeme’s and Ed was out, Ali drove to an outside pool on the other side of the city.
She had been seven years old when her father began taking her for swimming lessons every Saturday morning at Bega Memorial Swimming Pool. As with many things, her father followed her mother’s instructions, and this was what she said should happen. The walk was the good part — to be alone with her beloved father, his long legs beside her, the comfort of his hand in hers. She could almost forget where they were going. But somewhere along the way it would begin, and even with him there, she was imprisoned by what lay ahead.
It rolled out sickeningly. The leaden feeling in her stomach as they went through the turnstiles, her legs shaking as her father found a spot to sit on a bench, waiting while she took off the clothes she had put over her bathers, finding her goggles and putting on her cap. There was a lump in her throat, and she always wanted to cry, to say she couldn’t do it, but always she said nothing. If he noticed her fear he never said, and after a minute he would give her a quick pat and push her towards the pool, take out the Herald and start to read. The instructor’s voice, Mrs Heidke, crowded in on her; her German accent, with its odd, formal emphases. ‘All right, children, please get in the water now. First we will try the freestyle.’ She said it as two words, free and style, and that always made Ali feel she was not free, she could not escape.
Her legs were shaking now, the concrete cool and knobbly underfoot, her heart beating hard, the noises of the pool like those in a dream. She saw the goosebumps on her arms advertising to everyone that something was wrong with her, and she prayed she would not humiliate herself by pissing on the concrete.
Standing behind the skinny, mottled body of Tim Collier, she could tell he was scared too, which could have been a comfort but wasn’t. She despised him. He was a worse swimmer than her, and she never spoke to him. And then Mrs Heidke said, ‘Ali-son, start the free-style now.’ She could do nothing then to avoid the water and, at the moment of standing there, she had the sense that she might dissolve, melting into the ground like butter.
But then she was in, and the shock of the cold wiped her thoughts in one fell swoop, and she could almost have laughed. She still hated the lesson, swallowing water and dragging her body up and down, Mrs Heidke’s big, rubbery mouth opening and closing with her endless instructions. But she was almost happy. Nothing bad had happened. She was still her.
Afterwards her father wrapped her in a big towel, and they walked home hand in hand again, not talking, her hair in dripping tendrils down her back. They would stop at the cake shop in Church Street. She always got a jam tart and nibbled her way around the scalloped edges, leaving just the fake red of the jam, its buttery base flat in her palm.
At the very last minute, just as they were walking in the gate, Ali would turn the remains of the tart over. It didn’t look anything like what it had been. The pastry was crumbly, mushy, almost falling apart in her hand. She placed the jammy circle on her tongue, imagining it was blood. She closed her eyes as she swallowed and it was a wish, a spell. She would not think of her lesson again until she had to. And maybe, maybe, she wouldn’t have to go ever again.
Ali got out of the car, walked into the Brutalist building, and handed over her money to the man at the counter. She walked to the outside changing rooms. It was a cold night, and she shivered as she took her clothes off. Her thighs were goose-pimpled as she put on her bathers, but she felt a quiet elation as she walked out to the pool, allowing the night air on her bare skin.
A very beautiful woman was getting into the water, and the fifty-ish pool guard turned to watch her. Even in the cold fluorescent light her skin was the thing about her — absolutely flawless, a golden colour that made her seem as if she had just been born. Steam rose from the pool, and there was the swish-swish sound of the swimmers and the hum of the cars on the main road nearby. Ali put on her goggles. Her toes were red, and she adjusted the straps of her bathers over her freezing shoulders. She tried to focus her mind, to contract it around the next small step, the act of getting into the water.
It was after she’d dropped out of university. They were talking in their usual way: the latest school stuff, the autocratic headmaster, reports, crazy parents. Diane was talking about an article she’d read in some educational journal, something about kids at a very violent school in Washington. How kids had to leave knives at the door, how the windows were barred, and security guards prowled the halls, police came most days. Then someone was allowed to try a radical plan for two months. How everyone was reluctant. This was the school where parents and kids were awash with drugs.
‘This bloke took it all away,’ she said. ‘The bars and guards and all that. The walls were painted, and the doors were opened.’ She pushed her empty wine glass towards David. ‘It was just amazing,’ she said. ‘It worked. The kids started doing better. Attendances rose dramatically, results up 85 per cent. The police stopped being called. They ended up pro the whole thing.’
David nodded and raised the wine bottle to Ali’s glass. ‘Al?’
‘Mmm.’ It was strange drinking alcohol at their house. So often, still, Ali did not feel like an adult. But she felt it creeping up on her too. Where the desire to write had gone, the desire to teach others grew.
Months later she told her father casually, in passing, in one of her irregular phone calls home.
‘I’m going back to study,’ she said. ‘Part-time. I’m gonna finish it ...’
‘Right.’ Her father was the master of understatement, but she knew he was pleased, and even this was hard to bear. ‘How are you off for money?’
‘Fine. Waitressing. The house is cheap.’
Diane, of course, was ecstatic. ‘Darling,’ she said when she finally got hold of Ali. ‘We’re so pleased.’
Ali pri
ckled at the ‘we’, but the decision still felt right. ‘Yeah,’ she said laconically. ‘It’s good.’
‘You’ll make a wonderful teacher. I know you will.’ As if she had known it all along. A vocation. English and history.
But now it was different. She was in the water, and it was the closest to dream space that she knew. The way water transformed the heaviness of her body, made it other, more like an element. Tree, rock, leaf. Just her arms and legs, her breath and the water. She always felt she was on the edge of discovering something, getting beneath the story of her and Jessie to somewhere else. She never would.
But maybe something had changed. As she swam, she felt once more that she was there, in that place; leaves a soft smudge on the sandy path, wind a scratch-scratch in the trees, water flat and luminous in the dark. As she swam, she had the sense, as so many times before, that Jessie was waiting. But something, something made her feel she was protected now, held, not abandoned. The Jessie that was, that still was. The fear had eased a little. The water cushioned her, suspended her. She swam.
Thoughts came and went, filtering through her, around her, as she propelled herself forward. As well as endangering her, Jessie had felt at times like a charm. Making things happen, making things magical.
It was night, and she felt again she was part of something, an organism, all the bodies moving along. But she was alone. The water was just warm enough, a perfect temperature. Ali felt strong. The wind had blown up, and the bottom of the pool was scattered with leaves, a smattering of dirt. She liked this, the breaking down of what was artificially constructed and the elements. It was a reminder of how we try to keep things at bay, sometimes desperately. Earth, water, night, rock, decay, death.
She had tried to give Jessie back her words. Perhaps now she would tell a different story.
