Falling into Place

by Pamela Mc Casker

  “Shouldn’t you see him until you’re sure?”

  “I’ve seen him. All of him. He insists we start our new lives as of now.” Claire wonders at ‘as of now’. She’s never used such constipated phraseology before. It’s like starting a letter, ‘being in receipt of yours etc.’. If she lets this scene run on, she’ll hate herself even more.

  Claire very nearly says: “I must be there for him,” a phrase she’d sworn never to utter, even on pain of death. She stops herself. Standing on the brink of this verbal sinkhole is proof that moral decay is underway, if not total linguistic disintegration. Worse still, she fears uttering verbal epithets more than hurting Suz.

  “Never mind, Claire. It’s all good,” says Suz. In allowing this abominable cliché past her vigilant goalie, it’s clear how hurt Suz feels. Suz tries keeping her hands clasped in her lap but she cannot still them. They twine around each other like pet snakes. Poor Suz, usually a paragon of stoicism and poise!

  It’s nice of her to assume that Claire is worrying more about Suz than about the chore of telling her. “I wish happy things weren’t so sad,” Claire says, hugging Suz. She buries her face in her friend’s shoulder, which gesture twists her neck a bit. She can smell Suz’s lavender bath salts. “And don’t worry about money,” says Claire. “Clive will pay my share of the rent until you find someone.”

  Suz draws her lips in, calculating. “So, he’s lay-bying you!”

  Thank God, the waspish Suz is back! Claire thinks.

  “Okay, Claire. Nothing to be said. Let’s get you packed.”

  Claire feels perversely disappointed that Suz hasn’t fought harder for their friendship. Was that what she’d wanted to happen? To be dissuaded from her recklessness?

  A knock at the door startles them.

  Suz fluffs up her hair and opens the door to Alex. “Hi, you must be Clive,” she says, sounding desperately upbeat.

  “I’m his brother, Alex.”

  Seeing Alex through her friend’s eyes, Claire notices for the first time how exotic and handsome he is.

  “Helping with the move?”

  “If that’s okay.”

  “Sure. And golly, what super news!”

  Alex examines Suz’s face for signs of irony. He can’t decide. He smiles at her.

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” Claire says, not liking the way Suz and Alex are making cow-eyes at each other. They’d be hopeless together. Alex is too…

  Chapter 14

  Packing

  Suz helps Claire pack her things. They work in silence. Suz doesn’t chatter. Conversationally, she’s a sniper. She takes the high ground, says what’s what and then withdraws. To Suzy the background buzz of small talk is worse than elevator music. Thanks to her influence, Claire has modified her tendency to chatter nervously.

  They fold the contents of Claire’s wardrobe. She mainly wears jeans, T-shirts and roll-necked pullovers and vests with the occasional tartan skirt – a retro choice – when out of uniform. If you’re reading this, don’t feel superior. Everyone’s clothes screamed eighties in the 80s. Is it a crime to have been born in 1968, the year kaftans invaded the west?

  What might have been a tender leave-taking scene is made awkward by Alex, who’s trying to help but is frustrating their efforts by getting his untidy limbs in the way. It is as if he’s there to impede the moving process and not to hasten it. “Go and have a smoko, Claire suggests,” hoping he’ll take the hint and wait on the balcony.

  “What makes you think I smoke, Claire? Are tradies supposed to be unhealthy yobbos?”

  “No,” she assures him, puzzled by his venom. He sure is moodier than Clive, she thinks.

  “Perhaps you could make us a cup of tea then,” Suz suggests. “You’ll find everything approximately where you’d expect to find it.”

  “But I have no expectations of your kitchen, except that it’ll be cleaner than mine,” he says, and stays put. Myriad expressions cross his face as he struggles to make himself insignificant.

  At six-foot four, he’s not to blame for his extraordinary spatial needs, though his emotional intensity is all down to him. It seems he’s taken it upon himself to display the feelings Suz and Claire are hiding.

  “You wanted me here and now you can’t wait to get rid of me,” he sounds aggrieved. “You’ll need me soon enough for the cases.”

  Why does Claire feel that Alex, unlike all the men she’s ever known, is fascinated by the awkwardness of this leave-taking scene and is reluctant to miss out on its smallest nuance?

  Eventually, they close the cases on Claire’s things. Her bursting wardrobe’s been collapsed down into two bag lady bundles that might’ve been vacuum suctioned. She feels her life’s been summarised, and divided by four.

  Suz and she face each other, both wishing they hadn’t been thrust into the role of actors forced to make their farewells on a stage, for that’s how Alex’s presence makes them feel.

  He’s absorbed in their kitchen sink drama. An indie film director, he moves about the set, looking for novel camera angles to exploit.

  “I’d no idea you felt ready to get married,” says Suz, a trifle peevishly. “I thought you wanted to live a bit before you settled down.”

  “That was before I met Clive.” Claire glances over at Alex, hoping for his approbation, but his eyes slide away. “It’s not the idea of marriage…it’s meeting the right person. You don’t know…until you know,” she says lamely. “I hate leaving, Suz, you know I love you to death, it’s just that…”

  “…You love someone else more.”

  Suz’s words hit Claire like a well-aimed blow. “I love you both…You can’t quantify love precisely.”

  “So, live with me and gradually fall in love with Clive!”

  Claire can’t believe that Suz is pleading. All that magnificent dignity of hers! Gone!

  She rubs Suz’s arm as if to swab her skin before an inoculation against treachery. “I have to go, Suz, he wants me badly. And now!” she insists. But does he really? Claire wonders.

  “You’re worried that he won’t want you in a month!”

  Claire’s not sure whether this comment is born of caution or cruelty.

  “Moving in with him is the only way to find out.”

  “He’s your little experiment? He’ll help you grow up? Don’t worry, Claro, I understand.”

  Why do Aussies do this? Give you a diminutive that adds a syllable to your name? Claire wonders. And why the hell is she wondering this now?

  “I get it. You want to love him at close quarters while you love me distantly. You’ll keep me here, with your room fully paid up, so you’ve something to fall back on when things don’t work out.”

  “No, I’m sure things will work out. I…love him.”

  “Love is love,” says Suz. Platitudes are contagious, apparently.

  “One day soon you’ll be lucky enough to feel the way I do,” Claire says, her lines emerging with less sincerity, now she feels the ordeal will soon be over.

  “You mean, one day soon I’ll be silly enough to do something as risky as you?”

  While this is going on, Alex stands stock-still. Uluru trying to shrink to pebble size?

  No! He’s more like a caged lion, that can’t fight or flee and doesn’t want to. He fidgets with his ponytail; he draws it so tight, he puts his hairline under stress. This is a macro level tic.

  His eyes flicker from Suz to Claire and back again as if they were actresses vying for a Logie TV award, he the judge.

  Now he starts pacing, apparently suffering the separation stress that Claire would have been feeling had she been a half-decent person. It’s as though he has a greater stake in the outcome than either flatmate.

  The poky lounge room doesn’t help. Nor does the siting of their only decent piece, a Japanese hibachi from the Asian Bazaar in Queen’s Parade. It holds the prized Monstera Deliciosa plant that’s flourished in the northerly sun until it rivals next door’s Moreton Bay Fig. This obstacle f
orces Alex to change direction every three and a half paces, at which time he performs a ludicrous skip-step manoeuvre. He resembles a rake being scraped across a stage at the whim of a giant in the wings.

  “Stand still, Alex,” Claire orders him. Oddly, he obeys.

  “Bye the way, Suz, you keep the hibachi. You’ve always loved it so.”

  “I doubt you’d get it downstairs in one piece,” says Suz, making it clear that this concession won’t be mistaken for generosity.

  She and Suz hug. Claire notices that Suz, her tiny friend, already has a small roll of flesh above her bra-line at the back – the one men never see because their gaze is focused upon women’s fronts. It makes her want to weep. She sheds a tear or two, then mops her eyes with her sleeve, though only Alex sees.

  “Well, take care,” Claire says, aware of the subtext of her words: you’d better take care of yourself because I won’t be around if you get into strife. “It’s been great, honestly.”

  Suz critiques this inanity by refusing to make eye contact and allowing her head to bob mechanically at the far wall as if she were a toy nodding dog at the back of a car.

  Claire screws her key from its chain and leaves it on the phone table with a guilty little wave. Alex gestures benignly in her wake like an obsequious waiter.

  They’d have got well out of earshot if not for the sock/thong footwear quirk. Why the hell hadn’t she changed shoes when she could? Before they clear the stairwell, Suzy leans over the landing and calls out: “Don’t forget those pottery wine glasses, Claire.”

  “Oh, surely you can use them, Suz.” Ouch! More rhyming!

  “They’re not me,” she says, implying that these ugly drinking vessels are instead very ‘Claire’. In fact, they were a moving-away-from-Wangaratta gift. She’d thought them quaint at first. What genius came up with the idea of burying a ruby, semi-translucent beverage within a vessel that disguises all that’s beautiful about it?

  “You’ll use them, Claire; they’re very you.”

  Ouch, even sweet Suz has an edge to her personality! They leave the cases downstairs and climb back up again.

  While Claire wraps the glasses – she’s stretching the meaning of the word glass to breaking point – Alex exploits the hiatus in the proceedings to wonder aloud whether he and Suz shouldn’t get together some time. And Suz responds, too enthusiastically for Claire’s liking, exclaiming at what a ‘super’ idea this is. In saying ‘yes’, her voice rises girlishly.

  Missing is her caustic tone of earlier as she makes arrangements to ‘see’ Alex.

  Claire feels cross at how Alex has hijacked this scene – the tender parting of two long-term friends – and turned it into a Lonely Hearts’ Club meeting. Is she being a bitch? Claire wonders. But what annoys her above all is: why do we say ‘see’, when we mean hear, touch, taste, smell?

  Chapter 15

  Chest of Drawers, Prahran

  Alex helps Claire free up a drawer for her smalls. His room is brim-filled with books, drum kits, guitars, an unmade bed. Concert posters proclaim musical tastes: Jackson Browne, Van Morrison, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jethro Tull, Crowded House and Claire’s own beloved Joni Mitchell.

  There’s a Che Guevara poster. Che’s face reminds Claire of someone. As Alex flicks the bedspread across so she can perch on the bed, she glimpses his face juxtaposed with the poster.

  She can see Alex in Che, though the latter has more facial hair.

  What a tumult of clues for Claire, the archaeologist of souls. Unlikely to be invited in here often, she’s like a thirsty prospector drinking it all in. Her understanding of whom her new brother-in-law might be is firming up, but she knows artefacts can mislead. They proclaim: this is my persona, but we’re persons actually.

  Alex sighs. “I can’t get your drawers into my drawers.”

  “I’ll leave a case packed in the wardrobe,” Claire decides.

  “And scrabble about at 5.00 am? No way.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Gees, Claire, I can picture your pioneering ancestors inventing things with nails and string. Makeshift’s not good enough for my new sister. Let’s check out the furniture marts in Chapel Street. Come!”

  They set off in the ute.

  Life is weird. In one weekend, Claire’s gone from trams and cabs, via a part-interest in a Porsche key, back to a battered ute as usual. It’s rags to riches to rags. No humble Ford to soften the extremes.

  They park at the grimy end of Chapel Street. Alex opens her door. Where’s his disapproval of her over Suzy gone? They drift leisurely down the shopping strip.

  “If you travel its length from South to North, you’ll have gone from down-and-outer digs and pawn-brokers to power broker territory in under an hour; from serf to slave-driver in just the one revolution,” Alex informs her.

  At the lights in Malvern Road a turning vehicle shaves close to her. Alex grabs her arm and pulls her close. “Use your loaf,” he calls after the car. “Careful, Claire. Melbourne isn’t Wang.”

  He offers her his elbow-crook. Once across the street, each assumes the other responsible for uncoupling their caboose. He doesn’t. She can’t because he’s saved her life. They chug along awkwardly but more-or-less in step – all that one can expect of any human coupling. Claire is preternaturally aware of the neural activity going on usually unnoticed within; the busyness of nerve endings when focused upon is phenomenal. A lot is happening where bodies meet: shoulder, elbow, hip.

  She’s often walked like this with Suz when shopping, heads together, sharing confidences, but today her bodily awareness is electric. She fakes a greater interest in the window displays than in their sizzling proximity. Is he feeling what she feels? It should be obscene in in-laws.

  She feels warmth where her duffle coat meets his oilskin boundary rider’s coat. Alex’s clothing is an affectation in the city, but she’s in a forgiving mood.

  Many second-hand shops have congregated on this strip. Claire has a theory about ‘retro’.

  Some love or hate it with a passion. She’s mildly enthusiastic about 20% of it. Not everything has merit just because it’s old. Still, it’s fun to trawl the antique markets, seeking bargains.

  “Look Alex,” she says, "Mary is into corn-cob kitsch. She’d go crazy with her bankcard here.

  “And Suz loves ruby glass. Me, I prefer Kartell novelty furniture. Would that tubular console work for make-up?”

  “Maybe,” Alex says, “but Kartell cylindrical cabinets will be valuable one day – get one anyway.”

  “But it’s $40. Clive mightn’t think it suits his décor.”

  “Décor! Clive has stuff, not décor. I’ll buy it for you. A moving-in gift.”

  “Thank you, Alex.”

  They go in, pay, arrange delivery.

  They drift past clothing outlets with racks of trackie daks and parkas spilling onto the street.

  Pine furniture emporia sell lacquered beds for those just starting out in life. It’s the desperate end of consumerism. Having found oneself a roof, and covering for one’s nakedness, what’s left apart from food? Plenty. Claire’s visited top-end shops in Chapel Street, whose jeans sport designer rips and gouges. At this end, clothes thin and tear along stress lines.

  She wanders along deep in thought; is it better to have so much that it costs to look faux poor or merely to have too little from the get-go? She sighs nostalgically for school uniform days. No time wasted on unimportant choices. Self-expression! What a con!

  She turns and misses Alex. He’s disappeared! She trains her eyes on the straggly groups, but she sees no incongruous farmer’s coat. Soon he appears from inside a furniture auction house.

  “Claro Love, I’m here.” He beckons her towards the arcade. She blushes; only her dearest friends call her Claro. Alex’s use of ‘love’ unnerves her. It’s meant avuncularly, but…

  Unsettled, she takes his hand as a lost child might. “I missed you, Alex. Oops, I missed seeing where you’d got to.” Gee, I’m not allowe
d to miss him, she thinks, dropping his hand like a hot brick. She’d only lost sight of him 60 seconds ago. “I’m blathering, Alex. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “Sorry…”

  “I hate people who are always sorry.”

  “You hate me?”

  “No, on the contrary…I…”

  Life has moments when life’s clutch engages of its own accord as if for a sudden gear change.

  It’s as if life’s steady impetus is set to stall unless its progress gets a cranking up. It’s like coming upon a seesaw holding identical twins. You can’t tear your eyes away until you know what happens next. Here’s your chance to alter things, to give your life and fate, a good hard shove towards the daring. But the notion that the slightest pressure from one’s index finger can either ruin one’s life or tip the balance to the true is probably illusory. If fate is pre-programmed into our lives, shouldn’t it also be programmed to telegraph its outcomes in a timely way to us protagonists?

  Is this her seesaw moment, Claire wonders. Damn! Where’s her Juliet balcony?

  She’s playing for time, too cowardly to move. She wants Alex to say, ‘on the contrary’, and then go on to spell out what she hopes they’re both thinking. Meanwhile, she’s allowed to stand there nodding passively; her gender encourages cowardice, but Alex must be manly, take control. She acknowledges it’s unfair but she’s been through a lot recently. Is it her fault, if, upon reaching life’s tipping point, she can’t exploit the moment, but clings to old allegiances instead of embracing something, someone else?

  All she can say in her defence is this: how can what is be wrong? What is just is.

  Alex shoots her a despairing look before turning away. She can see by the sad slump of his back that he’s only pretending to browse the arcade’s treasures; pretending absorption in bric-à-brac’s tawdry charms. He’s feeling as torn as she.

  She follows him deep into the arcade; she decides she might as well go along with the rough draft of her life’s script for now.

  Alex shepherds her through aisles jam-packed with starter furniture. Out back there is an office occupied by a man whose belly would overhang its belt had he not been fully reclining his oak tip-tilted office chair. The cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth impedes his speech as much as the ash trail on his shirt concerns him – hardly at all.