‘I’m lucky to be alive.’
Ryan thought she winked but it might have just been her face doing whatever it wanted on its own. She went on about the Epworth Hospital, the buzzers and lights. How people died in wards around her. And how her boyfriend became her ex.
‘He didn’t want to even look at me...’
Ryan zoned out and played with a sugar packet. He wanted to crack it open and gulp it. His mum, before she’d gone health mad, had always done that when she was nervous and thought no one was looking. Ryan stopped his sugar urge. He caught his reflection in the window; four-day growth and pimple pock marks that had hung around since TAFE. He took off his safety vest. He wouldn’t have minded taking off and replacing his nose, too. It was bent from Lechie Freisa’s fist in Year 11. That was the day Lechie said, ‘Ryo, your dad fucked off because he didn’t want to look at your head anymore.’ Ryan threw a punch, it missed, and Lechie threw a better one.
Ryan asked Sally what she was up to for the rest of the day.
She said she didn’t know, maybe some study.
‘I’ve hired Alien.’
For the tenth time, could have been eleventh.
Okay, it was getting onto more like fifty. And he hadn’t bought a copy because he liked the look of the rental shop girl and her purple lipstick. Sally looked at Ryan now, like she was a culture vulture who went to the theatre. She probably did. She upped her eyebrows. A massive effort. But then she said, ‘Yeah, great, let’s go.’
It took them a long time to get the DVD into the player.
When she clomped into Ryan’s flat, Sally got free of her walking frame and planted herself on his couch. She didn’t seem to care about the cotton threads running loose or the empty chip packets. She asked what he did and he said, ‘Whatever the hell I like.’ That was a lie, but he loved saying it, always had. She laughed, as most people did, but hers turned to a gurgle.
Sally dived for his belt and flung the thing off. She pulled his work daks down before he had a chance to sit next to her.
It was a mighty effort getting Sally’s clothes off. Even more of a struggle trying to get her legs apart. And it didn’t really work. She tried hard, strained, and he tugged as gently as he could. But together they could only get her legs halfway open. She started crying. Just quiet tears she didn’t bother wiping. He liked her then. A lot. He sat her up, no easy thing, and said, ‘You know, we don’t have to worry. Let’s watch the movie.’
He was glad to have company. And only her body was stuffed. Chances are she thought he was the retarded one anyway. Ryan was pulling himself about that; he knew she thought he was retarded. But it seemed she didn’t give a crap.
It all felt wrong, pretty quickly; Sally turned around and bent over as best she could in front of his couch. She rested her breasts and shoulders on the dirty seat cushion. Her legs were still basically locked together, and when Ryan rustled up behind her, there was only one option for what he could do. He didn’t like the idea, but she understood the situation.
‘Whatever,’ she said, all breathy.
It felt weird and good and bad at the same time. And he couldn’t tell if she was hurting or happy. Or sad. Maybe all three. He tried to give her little bloke in the boat some work, but she pulled his hand away and told him just to get on with it.
She hated it and so did he. They couldn’t touch each other when they finished. Or talk. They got dressed and sorted and he stuck on Alien. The movie had been going an hour before they talked.
‘I’ve never seen this the whole way through,’ Sally said.
‘I’ve seen it heaps.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I like it.’
Because watching it protected him from the aliens he knew were out there. If not out there, then underground. Where he protected the city’s water supply from them. Nor was he going to tell her he thought his mum had been abducted by one a few years ago then returned. But the fucking alien had stayed in her body and taken her over. Changed her.
Sally asked lots of this and that about the plot and the alien and where the ship was going and how many sequels there’d been. She got cuddly. Ryan wanted her arms off his neck, her minty breath gone and back down the street. Because the sex had been bad and she was making him feel stupid and he liked her.
‘Why do you love Alien so much, really, Ryan? I mean, I get that Sigourney Weaver’s great, and the feminist narrative. But I thought you’d be more a Terminator man.’
He was not a Terminator man.
He was an Alien man.
That’s how it was and always would be.
The movie finished and he told Sally he had to go and visit his grandmother. It was true, but Sally looked at him like the alien was shooting straight out from his head.
‘Well, if you think you can just invite me back to your flat and use me you’ve got another think coming.’
After what they’d done, Ryan didn’t know what that other thing might be.
‘I catch up with her every month for dinner,’ he said softly.
Because his granddad was long gone and Jules needed family around, what with her sons scattered across the state.
‘Get fucked,’ Sally told him.
‘Oh, look, you know, we could hang out again some time...’ He wanted to. Maybe they could even become an item. Even if she’d probably drop him later because she thought he was stupid for believing in aliens. But Sally was in a major huff. She wobbled to her feet and got hold of her walking frame. She told him she’d thought he was different. He said I am different. She said not in that way. And he wanted to throw his hands in the air.
‘I had a good time,’ he said, meaning after the sex had finished.
Her face was even saggier now than when he’d first seen it. ‘Do you know how rich I am?’ she asked.
After he got over the shock of her saying something so weird, he replied, ‘No, tell me.’
‘I could buy your flat and the other six in this crappy block.’ ‘Great,’ he said. It must have been a decent TAC payout.
‘I hate you, Ryan,’ she said.
‘Well, you know, I don’t hate you, Sally. I think you’re a good sort of chick.’ She laughed bitterly and went chick! chick! like she was scratching in a henhouse.
‘I could get a better man than you in a raffle.’
‘No one raffles blokes.’
That set her off. She said there would be no point raffling blokes like him. She dissed him, told him he was everything wrong under the sun. He didn’t hear most of it because he zoned out. But when she finished she leant on her frame in front of his TV. He couldn’t see the DVD symbol. He liked to watch it when it flicked from side to side after a movie. It settled him. Sometimes he watched it for half an hour or more, and afterwards he was so calm he felt like he’d smoked a joint.
He sat on the couch like a numb nuts.
‘I have to go. I really do.’
‘Fine,’ she said, but didn’t move. Ryan stood and hugged her round the waist and she let him. Then, oh no, it was pants off again.
He only had a quarter of an hour to get to his grandma’s place. He wouldn’t have time to shower. And he wanted to. Bad. But his grandma hated it when he was late because it meant the beef got dry in the oven.
‘Sally, I’ve really got to head off.’
She nodded fiercely.
‘Can you at least give me a lift?’
‘Yeah, no trouble at all,’ he said, knowing it would be. He’d be late for sure now.
‘Well, it wouldn’t want to be any trouble...’
Sally told him where she lived. In a lovely house with two bathrooms and a spa, and pity, really, that he wouldn’t get to see it because he was such an arsehole. He asked her for her address. And stopped buttoning his shirt.
‘No worries, it’s on the way,’ he stammered, trying not to let the shock get to him.
‘I couldn’t care less if it isn’t on the way...’
‘Okay. All right.’
&
nbsp; Sally lived next-door to his grandma.
‘What is it Ryan?’
‘Nothing.’
He was breathing fast, he felt it. She leant on her frame and squinted at him like he was something squiggly under a microscope.
They drove under Porter Avenue’s elms and past the rundown Scout Hall. Not far to go now.
Sally laughed and laughed. Maybe because she’d just got laid and it had been the first time since the crash. Ryan was sure it had been.
She laughed like a car alarm. Ha hee, ha hee.
Her laughing was slicing him up.
‘Stop that or I’m kicking you out!’
She kept right on laughing. When he stopped the car and dragged her out of the front seat, she let him. But he got a fierce look from an old woman pushing a stroller.
Ryan left Sally next to a telephone pole. She was still laughing like a mad arse. He dragged her walking frame from the boot then drove away without even looking in his rear-vision mirror.
Yes, he did. Once. But he didn’t feel bad. Not really.
He felt bloody terrible.
What kind of a bloke...
It had started to look like rain. Sally only had half a kilometre of the Avenue to walk. Not much more than that. Maybe he should go back. But she’d probably still be laughing at him and he couldn’t bear it.
He hoped it wouldn’t rain
Grandma Jules was pissed with him for showing up late. The little squint behind her glasses said it all. But she didn’t stay miffed for long. She told him the beef was hardening up but not too bad.
‘I’ve put on a vegie dish, too. In a wok. I invited a friend. Do you mind?’
Too bad now if he did. He looked at the three places set at her long pine table and just knew who it was coming to dinner. That’s what all the laughing had been about, for sure.
‘Need a shower, Gran. Been workin’ hard.’
‘That’s fine. I’m not sure now what time Sally said she’d be here.’
She was at the dinner table when Ryan got out of the shower.
His hair was still a bit wet, but parted neatly because his gran liked it that way and why annoy her?
He didn’t care how Sally liked it.
She’d stopped laughing now. Oh, yeah, butter wouldn’t melt near her crooked lips.
‘Ryan, this is Sally.’
‘We met at the post office this morning. Sally was trying to post a letter.’
His gran gave him a scolding look.
Can’t you tell she’s disabled? Of course she’d struggle posting a letter!
Sally grinned from ear-to-ear on that crazy slant. Here we go, he thought.
‘Ryan helped me get it in, didn’t you, Ryan?’
‘Yeah, yeah... I did my best.’
His grandma laid the beef on the table in a dish.
‘I hope it’s not too hard.’
‘Sally quite likes hard meat... That’s what you said at the butcher’s this morning, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, yeah, that’s true, Ryan. But I like the longer cuts. They’re harder to find though.’
His gran was at the head of the table fussing vegetables out of the wok. Sally and Ryan sat across from each other. Ryan had a view out the dining room window of the neighbour’s renovated weatherboard McMansion. Going purple in the stormy sunset. Like Ryan’s face would if he didn’t settle down.
Women! Always have a go about your size after the deed’s done. Stuff this.
‘But you said that sausage was good enough to eat.’ ‘Yeah, but, very, very cold, wasn’t it? Almost frozen.’ His gran looked at him sternly. And knowingly.
‘I thought you said you met at the Post Office.’
‘Ryan took me down to the butchers in the IGA.’
Sally looked straight at him. ‘I’d probably need to skip a few suburbs to get some decent meat.’
Ryan’s grandma took off her glasses and laid them next to her bread plate. She knew something was up.
‘Is this meat all right, Sally?’
‘It’s the best I’ve ever had, Julie. I could eat it all day.’
‘Well, I got it from the butcher’s near the post office. If you’re interested.’
Jules looked at Ryan like she always did. Full of pride. It was why he kept coming over. Not just to look after her, but to get that chuffed feeling in his chest. Sally looked at him too. And got the tears on. She stared at Ryan like he was Brad Pitt in Titanic. Or whoever it was.
‘You could be right, Julie. I’ll have to see, won’t I?’
‘Yes. Yes you will.’
Ryan and Sally looked at each other, hostility dissipated.
‘Dessert will be nice, too, I think you’ll find.’
Ryan should have finished his main meal, excused himself and said, You two ladies have a lovely time. But, no, he stayed for the baked sultana pudding. He listened to the women talk about the fashions in the new boutique, the one with the head-less mannequins. Then he offered to walk Sally home—what, fifty metres?—and he went in and sucked champagne in her spa. He let her play with him and carry on and joke about how good the meat actually was around here. And he thought, Sometimes I get things right.
He could move out of his shithole flat and live next-door to his grandma. Right here. There were worse things in life. He knew that. His gran would soon need more looking after. She’d done a mighty job looking after him when he was a kid and his mum had been working hard at the hospital. These two, this Sally and his grandma, they’d need a lot of looking after.
He laughed and dunked Sally’s head in her spa, let her bubble for a bit, then pulled her out.
‘How’d you like that?’ he asked as she spluttered. Then she started laughing her head off.
‘Do it again!’
16. The Stevensons
Peter and Simon finished kicking the football around the overgrown park with their primary school-aged sons, Will and Ryan. The men had sweat on their brows and up the backs of their t-shirts. But even in their footy jumpers, the kids hadn’t raised a sweat.
They all dodged footpath dogshit on their way back to Simon’s house. Simon was as excited as the boys; he wanted to bounce the footy. He handed his stubby to Peter, and Simon’s little son Ryan tried to steal the ball from his father.
‘Too slow, fella.’
Peter tried to take an interest in his brother’s complaints about his boss.
‘He’s a wanker, mate. A total fucking wanker. I tell you, one day I’ll chuck it all in and head up north. Fishing boats or something, fuck it.’
Little Will smirked; he couldn’t believe all the swearing he’d heard today. Peter decided not to talk to his son about it right then. He’d do it later. When the night was finally over and he’d driven him back to Melbourne and bed.
Peter gave the stubby back to its owner and Simon dragged open the wonky gates of his Westmore home. They all negoti-ated the parked cars; Peter’s Subaru wagon and Simon’s Holden work ute. Simon initiated a mock race and the boys rocketed up the patio steps behind him.
In the kitchen, Simon sculled the rest of his fifth stubby then headed to his bedroom to get dressed. Peter changed into a clean, white shirt and helped his mum set the dinner table. Simon’s wife Fiona tried again to get Peter’s attention. She wanted to talk to him about the prints she’d stuck on the corridor walls. He told her he’d have a look at them when he’d finished setting the table. But he had no intention of doing it.
They were prints. Not originals, for God’s sake.
Framed wedding photos lined Fiona’s buffet: Peter’s from his first marriage to Jayne; Fiona and Simon’s big day; and Terry and Kerryn’s wedding in Nongo National Park. Peter picked up Simon’s wedding photo. His penguin-suited brother had his arm around his bride as if she were a teammate in a footy photo.
Peter hadn’t been to Simon and Fiona’s house for years. Why were his and Terry’s wedding photos on display? Then he realised that Jules had probably put them there, a collection she’d no d
oubt also established at Terry’s place. She’d put them in Peter’s apartment, too, if he gave her the chance. All without a thought for the irony that she’d divorced their father.
Do as I say, kids. Not as I do.
Peter put knives on placemats that featured a shiny Surfer’s Paradise scene. He’d always had trouble making sense of what Jules said and did. More so every year since his father’s death. Like this Dinner to Celebrate the Anniversary of Ron’s Passing.
He laid the dessert spoons then brought glasses from the buffet.
He’d never been to one of these memorials. He’d always found something else to put in his diary. But his son turning six this year made him think it was time to deepen his connection with his family. Go the whole hog.
Come on, son, he’d have said if the boy were older. Let’s go on the Ron Mausoleum Tour.
Will was playing with his cousins. They stampeded into the dining room and shot each other with massive plastic guns dispensing foam balls. A red one hit Peter in the head and he wanted to laugh, but didn’t. He knew his wife Celia would have, but he hadn’t let her come. They’d eloped a year ago. Celia had met Terry, but no one else in the family. It was the way Peter wanted it. For now. Tonight, with everyone behaving civilly, he’d almost forgotten why.
He went to the kitchen to get the pepper and salt grinders and Simon was there in a fresh, black heavy metal t-shirt and red undies. The bottom of his t-shirt didn’t quite reach the waistband of his undies, which meant his stomach was a white belt between the two tight articles of clothing. Peter said something. No one, not even Peter, could remember later what it was. But Simon told him to fuck off. Picked up another stubby. Cracked it. Drank from it in gulps that set his Adam’s apple to tumbling.
‘You’re no bloody help,’ he snapped at Peter.
‘What do you mean? I’m setting the table.’
Simon scoffed.
‘You know what I mean. You were no help with... I mean, you’re... You’re just fucked... You’re up yourself and you always have been.’
The last dribble of stubby number six went down.
Hadn’t Peter just gone to the park and had fun with Simon and his kid? What the hell was this?
We. Are. Family. Page 17
