Joel & Cat Set the Story Straight

by Nick Earls

  Joel

  Forgiveness? Eislander wasn’t so sure about that. The way he read it, it was about sacrifice – the sacrifices, small and large, that people make every day, often without any recognition. And that would be just the kind of thing these people wouldn’t get. Spade would be the hero – that was obvious to them all – but it would be guys like Eislander who took the fall, the bullet, the blast every time. No one thanks the stunt guy as they walk away, back-slapping, and he’s left alone to scoop low-carb Hollywood food onto his plate in the catering tent. What would Spade know about the subtleties of real emotions? What would Spielberg know? Eislander knew – the stars are the heroes, the stunt guy’s forever taking it up the ass. That’s just how it is.

  – Sunday

  I don’t sleep well on Saturday night. I’m too stressed and anxious to sleep. Not because of the Pete-Sandy date – I know Joel managed to take care of that. No, I toss and turn and toss and turn and pace around my room worrying about the Laurel revelation and trying to decide whether or not I need – should, no, need – to tell Joel the truth about why Emma dumped him.

  Right now, at eight thirty-nine in the morning, I’m thinking that I’m not going to because, you know, what difference would it make? None. Emma’s got the hots for some new guy at school – she won’t tell me his name, but it’s only a matter of time before I get it out of her. And anyway, she’s conveniently forgotten this, but the truth is she was thinking of dumping Joel anyway because he’d bought her a copy of Citizen Kane for her birthday. I thought it was a brilliant gift, but it horrified her. (Mostly because she’d been dropping hints that she wanted the Australian Idol cast CD, but I can remember Joel saying that it would be a cold day in hell before he walked out of Sanity with that in his hand.)

  So the point is that I probably did nothing more than help fate along. I broke them up just a little sooner than expected. And, let’s face it, I’m the only one who saw Laurel and Joel together. So I’m thinking that I’m just gonna take it to the grave with me. No harm done. Joel doesn’t need to know that it was my big fat mouth that convinced Emma to drop his sorry ass. Or that I reported to Mr Ashton in a somewhat exaggerated fashion that Joel wouldn’t take ‘you’re dumped’ for an answer and was bugging Emma at lunchtime and after school.

  ‘Who wants eggs?’ My father bellows down the hallway. Now is as good a time as any to innocently ask him how last night’s date went. Even though I know Joel pulled a sickie to put a stop to it.

  I saunter into the kitchen to find my father madly whipping eggs like there’s a timer and prize money involved.

  ‘Sooooo, how was the date with San–’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he says, while deliberately avoiding my eyes. He’s definitely ducking the subject.

  ‘Make sure you put in lots of cheese,’ I instruct him from the safety of the kitchen bench. I’ve been told before that I’m a culinary backseat driver.

  But Dad’s just beating even faster, and now has pretty much turned his back on me.

  ‘Do me a favour and get your brother to the table,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘I’ve called him three times already.’

  I nod. Roll my eyes for the benefit of no one but myself. Walk into the chaos that is Mark’s bedroom. I find him sitting on the floor wearing his white dress-up doctor’s coat and plastic stethoscope, masterminding some sort of imaginary interaction between his Batman action figure and his Harry Potter doll.

  ‘Okay, Dr Mark, breakfast is ready.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Just a minute, though, Dr Harry just has to cure Batman.’

  I smile and think how cute Mark is – right up until I see Dr Harry pull down Batman’s tights and try to stick one of his big wizardy fingers up the Caped Crusader’s arse.

  ‘MARK! What the hell are you doing? That’s revolting. Stop that immediately.’

  And that’s when Mark looks up at me and says, in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Batman has pendicitus. He has to have a ternal zamination.’

  ‘What?’ I say, as I watch Harry Potter continue to poke Batman up the freckle. ‘Mark, put the dolls down right now.’ I look down at Batman, currently bent over the shoebox examination table, and is it my imagination or is Batman looking more traumatised and violated than usual? ‘Mark, you mustn’t do that. It’s not nice. That’s not what doctors do.’

  ‘Yes, it is, Cat! Ask Dad. Pendicitus is where you get a sore tummy and you have to have a ternal zamination. Dad said so last night. And I asked him what that was and this is it.’

  That’s when I realise exactly what Mark is telling me and – not for the last time this morning – vomit rises up in my throat.

  There are some things you don’t ever want to talk to your father about. Sex being one. His recent internal examination of your tandem-story buddy and pretend boyfriend being the other.

  ‘Look, it was a lot more difficult for me than I think it was for Joel,’ my father says sternly, staring down at his scrambled eggs. ‘And appendicitis is a very serious thing, Cat.’ He points a spoon at me. ‘People can die from it. If his appendix had burst we might have had real trouble on our hands.’

  ‘Yeah, but Dad, my god, I mean, did you really need to put your finger up Joel’s –’

  ‘BUM!’ yells Mark, rounding the corner.

  ‘The word is “rectum”. Rectum,’ says my father, waggling a finger at Mark, as he takes his seat at the breakfast table. And it’s a finger that, frankly, I’d prefer to keep my distance from. ‘We shouldn’t even be talking about this. Mark overheard me on the phone to Sandy last night and I had to explain the broad details of appendicitis. There is such a thing as patient confidentiality, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to any of your friends. It’s not the type of thing that Joel would want going around the school. Now, who wants toast?’

  I watch my father aggressively butter a few slices of bread. ‘Cat?’ he says, holding a piece of buttery toast towards me. I stare at the toast. Stare at the fingers holding the toast. I refuse the toast. This is one degree of separation that I just can’t stomach.

  My father sighs and points out that he was wearing gloves. Mark, meanwhile, decides that his eggs actually taste a bit like poo and refuses to eat another mouthful.

  I put my head in my hands and try to pretend I don’t hear my father say, ‘If it’s any consolation I was very gentle and I used half a tube of lubricant.’

  I SMS Joel an hour later and suggest that we meet at the Zyx café on High Street, Toowong. A café that is close to both our homes as well as trains and buses. A café that also happens to have well-padded seats.

  I’m already there, studying the menu for typos, when he walks in. I point for him to order, holding up my banana smoothie to show him that my order’s in.

  He saunters over a few minutes later, putting his number down next to the salt and pepper shakers.

  ‘You don’t want to sit outside? I have vivid memories of you always wanting to sit outside whenever you, me, Emma and Luke went out anywhere. I’m sure they won’t care if we move, so long as we have our order-number thingie with us.’ He begins to move, ready to scout out a suitable footpath table for us.

  ‘No, Joel, it’s, ah, fine. I mean, I do like sitting outside – good memory – but I thought you might prefer a booth.’

  He laughs, and then slides along the seat on the other side of our table. ‘Why would I prefer a booth?’ he says, looking confused.

  I pretend to rifle through my handbag for a tissue. ‘Well, you know, the seats are padded.’

  ‘Why would I care whether or not the seats were padded?’

  And then I look up, biting my lip, and I watch as the realisation hits him.

  ‘OH MY GOD. You know? He told you?’

  ‘I walked in on my little brother playing doctors this morning with his dolls. Put it this way, Harry Potter was giving Batman the finger and not in the way you’d expect.’

  ‘Oh god,’ he says, his forehead on his hand. ‘Jesus, it was ju
st –’

  ‘I know – I can imagine.’

  He looks up at me. ‘No, no, I really, really don’t think you can. It was like your father was digging for gold. Anyway, let’s not talk about it. Can we just not talk about it?’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘I just want you to know how sorry I am. I just didn’t see that bit in the book about the rectal examination. It was on the next page and I thought I’d –’

  Joel puts his hand up at me and says, ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

  ‘Okay, sorry, sorry. I guess the positive is that you stopped the date from happening.’

  A waitress comes over and sets down an espresso and a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

  Joel watches her go back to the counter, and then turns to face me again. ‘Your dad said something strange to me last night, actually.’ He takes a bite into one half of his sandwich.

  ‘What? “Just relax. This won’t hurt a bit”?’

  Joel raises his eyebrows and gives me the finger. ‘No, loser. He asked me how long you and I had been dating. Obviously someone gave your father that idea, and it sure wasn’t me.’

  I stare at Joel with my mouth open. Shit.

  ‘Well, look, I was trying to come up with ways to stop the date. The him-and-your-mother date. So I went the incest angle.’ Joel stops mid-bite. ‘Well, you know, I said that you and I were dating, and that meant they couldn’t date because otherwise it would be, you know, gross. Sort of incestuous.’

  ‘That’s not incest. If you and I were dating and our parents were dating, technically, legally, it would be fine because you and I aren’t blood relatives. Now, if you were my half-sister, then we’d have a problem, and probably a Jerry Springer episode.’

  And that’s when I hear myself saying, ‘Ha, ha,’ in a rather forced way, quickly followed by, ‘Speaking of the whole sister-incest thing, I thought you were dating Laurel. I saw you together, and I told Emma to break up with you because I thought you were cheating on her.’ I force my facial muscles to smile. Joel practically chokes on his sandwich.

  ‘What? What did you just say about Emma and Laurel?’ Joel sits up and I watch as his eyes narrow.

  ‘Well, I, um… I read that attachment from your father the other day and I realised that the girl I saw you with at Indooroopilly was your sister.’ I try to keep my tone light. As if what I’m saying is a funny story, a crazy misunderstanding, even though I know he’s not going to see the humour.

  ‘Hang on, what attachment?’

  ‘You sent it to me. You forwarded me an email from your dad that had some links to tandem-story ideas and stuff.’

  ‘Right, and?’ His tone is moving from confused to angry.

  I am so completely screwed.

  ‘And there were photos of your sisters in his email and I opened them, and when I saw the one of Laurel I realised that she’s the girl I saw you with at Indooroopilly that day. Though, actually, she’s not a blood relative so –’

  ‘What day? Cat, what are you talking about?’

  My mouth is dry. It will do me no good to say that, biology-wise, he probably could date Laurel, even if it wouldn’t be that great socially. I pour myself some water and take a gulp. And then a deep breath.

  ‘When you were going out with Emma, I went to Indooroopilly one afternoon and saw you in the food court having lunch with some girl. And when you got up to leave, you hugged her.’ Joel’s jaw drops open. ‘And I thought –’

  ‘You thought you’d caught me cheating. And you told Emma. You told Emma that I’d cheated on her and that’s why she broke up with me.’ And he says this as though he’s working it out as the words are coming out of his mouth. Then he looks at me with a mixture of hatred and disbelief. ‘You’re the reason Emma dumped me.’

  ‘Well, yes, but I –’

  ‘That wasn’t a question, Cat. It was a statement. It’s pretty clear now what you’ve done. What you did. To Emma and me.’

  ‘But, how was I to know that you had a stepsister? I didn’t realise, didn’t know until I saw her photo. And it’s not as if you and Emma would still be together now –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, she’s got the hots for someone else. And you were giving her the shits anyway because of the Citizen Kane DVD…’ SHUT UP! Why am I saying this? It’s making it so much worse.

  ‘So now, according to you and Emma, I also give shit presents.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it that way…’

  Joel gives a half laugh and looks away, out the café window. I watch as he shakes his head and mutters, ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ he says, turning back. ‘Just keep away from me. I don’t want anything to do with you. Or your screwed-up family.’

  And I watch as Joel gets up and walks out of the cafe and doesn’t look back.

  I walk through the front door a little over thirty minutes later, determined to harangue Dad into letting me make Wendy’s egg-and-bacon pie for the second time this week. It was an unexpected hit on Thursday night when Dad and I made it together and Dad beamed at me with every bite. The key, we decided, was the Gruyère cheese.

  Tonight I want comfort food like Wendy’s egg-and-bacon pie because my meeting with Joel has left me feeling more depressed than I would have thought possible. I go over the conversation in my head. Relive the bits when we were joking around. I can’t believe I thought the worst part of our meeting was going to be the ‘finger up the arse’ part. Why did I mention the Emma thing? Why didn’t I take it to the grave? I’m such an idiot! Tonight I just want comfort food, and the peace and quiet of my room.

  ‘Who wants egg-and-bacon pie for dinner?’ I call out as I amble down the hallway, chucking my house keys into the bowl on the sideboard. ‘I can make it by myself this time and we’ve got all the ingredients.’ No answer. ‘DAD?’ I round the corner of the kitchen expecting to find either Mark or Dad. What I find instead is my mother. More specifically, my mother sitting across the kitchen table from my father. And they’re holding hands.

  Dad is just staring at Mum as though he can’t quite believe she’s here. As if he can’t risk taking his eyes off her in case she slips away again.

  ‘I’m making egg-and-bacon pie for dinner, ‘I say, keeping my eyes firmly on Dad and not even acknowledging Mum’s presence. ‘And there’s only enough for three.’

  I’m not sure why I say that. And I can hear how bitchy it sounds. But even though this is what I’ve wanted from the start – wanted Mum to come home, wanted things to go back to the way they were before she left – now that she’s here, I’m not sure I want her to be. And the part of me that just wants to hug her and feel her run her fingers through my hair is right now being outweighed by the part that wants to punish her for ever leaving. She can’t think that she can just waltz back in and share our pie. Things have changed.

  ‘Cat, do you think maybe there’d be enough for me?’ My mum’s voice is hesitant.

  But all I do is close my eyes as I spin around and walk out of the kitchen, saying, ‘I really can’t deal with this right now.’

  It’s only once I’ve clicked Compose and started to write my email to Joel that I realise I need to tell him about my mum coming back. From the look of things in the Davis family kitchen, my parents are in the process of once again patching things up, and although I can’t be certain it’s for good, he should probably know. Just in case he wants to tell his mum.

  Joel,

  I really need to talk to you.

  Cat

  Spielberg walks back onto the set and snaps the clapperboard. ‘All right, people. It’s time to do take one of scene fifteen of our movie Let He Who Has Never Sinned Cast the First Stone, ‘I’m ready, Steven,’ Spade says breathily, his torn dress set at just the right angle, a string of pearls – maybe his mother’s – hanging loosely in his right hand. ‘I’m as sorry as can be, and I’m ready for my close-up.’

  – Monday

  The rest of my weekend? Where do I begin? The rank inj
ustice of it? The anal penetration? ‘How was the rest of my weekend? You’ve got no idea.’

  ‘So, fill me in then,’ Luke says. ‘Amaze me. Ah, remember that line from way back on day one of the tandem story? Has young Catriona been amazing you?’

  ‘Nope, but her dad’s been filling me in in his own special way. And you might as well hear all about it, because I owe that family nothing. Her parents seem to have split up, and her father’s gone feral. His entire wardrobe is now Hawaiian shirts, and if he was anymore faketanned he’d be embalmed.’

  ‘Oh my god,’ Luke says. ‘Oh my god.’ His eyes bug out of his head as he lurches a step or two in front of me into the story. ‘The date you had to stop on the weekend…’

  ‘Yep, my mum and Sleazy Pete Davis. The man-eating shark meets the deeptan date-meister.’

  ‘Eat bronze, baby.’

  The sausage roll sticks in my throat, and I quickly think a range of other, better thoughts that might allow it to pass through. ‘Okay, this is my mother we’re talking about.’

  I put the rest of the sausage roll down. Luke picks it up and eats it.

  ‘Did your parents teach you nothing?’

  He laughs and says, his mouth still half-full with my lunch, ‘Are you too tight to pay for sauce or something? Who likes them dry?’

  He’s sitting back on a battered old chair that he found folded up beside a bin, and he’s got his legs stuck out in front of him, his feet up on the bench next to me. Around us, the usual lunchtime clamour goes on. He pulls a tennis ball out of his pocket and starts bouncing it on the concrete.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘You stopped the date then.’

  ‘Yeah. I stopped it. But, um…’ I really don’t know the way into this. ‘I had nothing to work with, so I thought I’d go for a disease. You know, a disease that’d keep my mother at home. So I talked to Cat, since Sleazy Pete’s got all those medical books, and she said appendicitis.’