It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake

by Claire Christian

  I shake my head. I tried to do something and I fucking failed, miserably. Never again. Then there’s another message: How do you want to feel, Noni?

  I start to type a reply about four thousand times but I delete them all. How do I want to feel? I don’t even know.

  5

  By Monday lunch I’m still in a daze. I’d spent the rest of Sunday tired, hiding and hungover. I’d stayed in my pyjamas all day and only left the house to go to the Macca’s drive-thru. The whole drive I cursed the happy families on their way to their Sunday activities, the couples looking deeply satisfied from their morning sex and coffee, people with plans and places to be. Lindell’s question had been running over and over in my head all day and I kept pushing it away, unsure how to answer it. My shit mood had carried over to Monday and I’d unnecessarily made a girl in grade nine cry by being too hard on her and threatening to expel her, even though I had no intention of doing that. I felt awful.

  ‘Did you read about that fire?’ Colin asks as he forks a tin of tuna in the staffroom. I try to hide my disgust, even though I’m appalled at him for eating fish in an enclosed space.

  ‘No. What?’ I say.

  ‘It’s there in the paper. Big industrial fire—something collapsed, two firefighters in the hospital and one died.’ My stomach lurches as I lunge for the paper and there she is on the front page. My firefighter. Dead.

  ‘It’s terrible, hey?’ says Colin, still chewing unconcernedly.

  I open my mouth but no sound comes out. I just look at her face staring back at me. She was thirty-six too. My age. Fuck. I don’t know what to do. My firefighter.

  ‘You alright, Noni?’

  ‘I don’t—I knew her. She—She was at the station with the kids on the—’

  Colin looks up from his tuna. ‘I’m sorry. Were you close?’

  I shake my head, and a flash of us in her bed, giggling, flashes into my mind. I read the article. Ruby.

  The firefighter’s name was Ruby.

  A few years earlier, Joan and I had a friend, Xavier, who had a brain aneurism and died. Just like that. He was making crumpets for his boyfriend in their kitchen one morning and he just fell down.

  Dead.

  Crumpets.

  Fuck.

  At his funeral people talked about the way Xavier had lived his life. They said that he had achieved so much, travelled so far, that he was constantly learning new things, pushing his body, challenging himself, inspiring others. That he had loved and been loved. And they said that knowing all this made this one shitty random anomaly slightly easier to comprehend—because he had lived his life well.

  Joan and I were rattled. We talked about it a lot. For the next few months all of our conversations would manage to find their way back to Xavier. To what happened to him. So we booked flights to Thailand and climbed a mountain, danced on beaches, had loud sex and marvelled at beautiful landscapes and we promised that we’d live our lives better in order to honour our friend.

  It’s so fucked up that it takes a tragedy to make us act—to put what is most important into perspective. But do you know what’s shittier? That eventually monotony settles on top of the grief and you get consumed by routine and bills and all the unimportant details until that new drive you felt gets pushed down deep. It’s present, but it never feels as urgent as in the immediate moment after the tragedy. You forget about the way you wanted to live your life, you push aside your good intent.

  By the time I get home from supervising the school debating team, I’m completely drained and can’t believe only twelve hours have passed since I left. It feels like a lifetime. I head to the fridge, knowing that the only things in there are half a bottle of Gatorade, some off milk, a soggy apple and some yogurt that has far too much sugar in it to be healthy. I grab the yogurt and sit on the couch, and I sob. I feel weird for feeling so upset because I barely knew Ruby. I know very little about her. Surely, tears should be reserved for people who know more than what she did for a living, that she was neat and she was great in bed. She died. She’s dead.

  I wonder what people would say about me if I just dropped down dead in my lounge room right now.

  Noni was nice.

  Constant.

  A good friend.

  She did some stuff.

  Worked hard.

  Um.

  Which one was Noni?

  Oh, her?

  Oh, I didn’t really know her very well.

  She was a six if she wore makeup.

  This makes me cry more. This imagined summary feels devastating. I want people to say more than this.

  Then I notice the hastily scrawled should’ve-boned list on the floor under the coffee table. I grab it and with thoughts of aneurisms, firefighters named Ruby and my own mortality swirling wildly, I know what I have to do.

  I pace around my tiny kitchen, giving myself a pep talk worthy of the climactic moment in a sports movie. This is our moment. Our moment to defy the odds and rise above the adversity of missed opportunity. We need to take our future into our hands and be proactive. We can.

  ‘I can!’ I holler. My voice booms weirdly in my quiet apartment.

  I pick up my phone and start to type.

  Hey. I delete it.

  Molly! Hi. I delete it—too many exclamation marks.

  So… Weird. Don’t send that.

  A joke maybe? But I don’t know any good jokes. Or a topical reference? I could ask her about that thing that was all over the news. Closer. A personal joke. Something that will make her smile. Good. Something that lets her know that you’re thinking about her. We once watched Labyrinth in a hungover stupor. We laughed about Bowie’s impressive cod piece and said that all we could ever hope for in life was to find someone as supportive of our dreams as that cod piece.

  The Labyrinth is on, I lie. And I’m once again left with a lot of feelings. Like, could I pull off a ruffled sleeve? Funny. Reminiscent. Asking a question so she has to answer. Well, if she wants to. Good, I think this is good.

  So why aren’t I hitting send?

  Because what if it’s another complete disaster? I might make a fool of myself and end up looking like a complete idiot… again. Doing this may disrupt the very comfortable fabric of my life. And that’s petrifying, because I’m very comfortable here. I know how things work. How I work. I’m happy being relatively unhappy.

  The realisation stuns me. I’m happy being unhappy. The tears quickly well. I’m happy being unhappy. I don’t want to be happy being unhappy. I want to be happy.

  ‘Fuuuuuck!’ I yell as I hit send.

  6

  The fluro lights are bright, which amplifies the general air of frustration emanating from the throngs of people wandering the enormous maze-like shopping centre. No one looks good under fluro lights. Molly hasn’t replied. She hasn’t even read the message. I’ve checked pretty much hourly, but no change. When I’m not thinking about Molly and the fact she hasn’t replied, I’m thinking about Ben and that whole stupid night, or thinking about Ruby, the firefighter. I’m thinking that I don’t want to die amid the flames of my boring, predictable, sexless life and that I’ve got to do something about it. But what? Deep-diving into the should-have-would-have-could-haves of my past doesn’t feel right anymore.

  I walk past one of those shops where everything is tight and busty and vintage-looking and the staff look like pin-up girls. Straight-up bombshells. A skirt catches my eye and I take two steps inside before a woman swoops in on me. ‘Can I help you with anything?’

  ‘Maybe a pencil skirt. But I don’t know. I’ve never had one. I thought maybe—can I try one on? Will it even fit me? Your sizes, I mean?’

  I’ve always, always wanted to wear a pencil skirt. Always. I don’t wear anything tight. I’m too desperately insecure about my bumps and people seeing them. But maybe I can start with a skirt?

  ‘Of course, doll, shall I get you a few to see what you like?’

  Within minutes she’s back with a handful of skirts. I t
ry the first one on and I hate it. I don’t even need to go out and look in the mirror to know it’s not for me. I hate when there isn’t a mirror inside the change room. I know it’s a bullshit sales technique, but I’m pretty sure it makes insecure women less likely to buy, not more. I try on the second skirt and it zips up with ease, but it’s tight, black and simple, with a flared hem. I go out hesitantly, praying that there’s no one around. But the girl is ready for me and she pounces. I like her. She’s wearing bright red lipstick and her enormous boobs perch perfectly out of the top of her tight dress. We’re roughly the same size, and I think she’s gorgeous. But I’d never be confident enough to wear a dress like that. Or would I?

  ‘Doll. Yes.’ She smiles wide.

  ‘No.’ I look in the mirror and all I see is my stomach paunch. ‘What about this bit?’ I say, pointing to it.

  ‘Your stomach?’ She looks at me with her eyebrows raised. ‘Everyone has one, doll.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  She interrupts. ‘If you’re not comfortable then take it off, ’cause you’re never going to wear it if you’re not comfortable. But let me get you something else.’ She trots away and I pull the curtain closed, take off the skirt and stand in my stretched, baggy, used-to-be-lilac-but-are-now-a-weird-grey-colour cotton fuller-than-full-brief undies. She hands in another skirt.

  ‘Try that. It’s got a peplum waist.’

  ‘A what?’ I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I try it on. It sits high on me and I discover a peplum waist is like a longish frill kind of thing that flares and hits the top of my hips. The skirt is tight and sits above my knees with a slit at the back. I walk out and look in the mirror. And…I don’t hate it.

  The girl plops a pair of kitten heels at my feet. ‘Just stand in those—watch what happens to your legs.’

  I look at her, expecting some kind of magic trick, which it sort of is, because in the mirror I look longer, curvier. You can see the slide of my waist into my hip and into my leg.

  Holy shit. I look like a bombshell.

  ‘Doll, if you don’t buy that skirt you’re an idiot,’ she says.

  I laugh. ‘Okay.’

  So, I buy it. I buy it because I want it, because I felt good when I looked at myself in it in the mirror. The pencil skirt acts like a can of petrol on a tiny fire and I walk out of the shop and straight into a hairdresser.

  Jools is vibrant. All full-sleeve tattoos, pink hair and a no bullshit vibe. I like her instantly. I can tell that she doesn’t care what people think, but that she cares about people. Jools is the kind of woman I want to be.

  ‘So, what do you want to do?’ she beams brightly. I have two photos of haircuts saved in my phone. I show her the first, which is a slight riff on what I already have—shoulder length, brown, with a long, side-swept fringe—a haircut that hides the roundness of my jaw. Sensible.

  ‘Yeah, cute,’ she says unenthusiastically. We get talking, and somewhere around her massaging my head at the basin, I tell her about the should’ve-boned list. It all kind of bubbles out of me, and I feel a certain thrill as she stands staring at me mouth agape, eyes wild with awe.

  ‘This is fucking excellent.’ She repeats every syllable. ‘Fuck-ing-ex-cel-lent.’ She cackles joyously. ‘We don’t prioritise ourselves enough, babe—we’re so worried about what other people will think. But it’s such a liberation when you stop giving a flying fuck.’ Then she tilts her head to the side and I’m pretty sure she looks directly into my soul. ‘What do you actually want to do with your hair?’ she says and I smile.

  The second picture, which I’ve had saved on my phone for years, is a short, blonde pixie cut. I’ve never been brave enough to show anyone, not even Lindell, in case they affirmed my worry that it’d look dumb on me.

  ‘Well—’ I say, swallowing hard and scrolling through my pictures. I hold the phone close to my chest. ‘I’ve always wanted to, maybe, do something, I was thinking that this could…’ I show her the pixie cut.

  She actually leaps in the air with a squeal. ‘This. We’re doing this. Yes? Fuck it. Right?’

  Oh god. ‘Yes?’ I ask, but I’m nodding.

  ‘Absolutely, this is going to look amazing.’

  ‘You don’t think my face is too round?’ I whimper.

  Jools looks like she’s going to kill me with kindness. ‘Do you want this haircut?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, babe.’ She bundles my hair into a ponytail and with a snip it’s gone. There’s no backing out now. I feel immediately lighter—physically and metaphorically. She gets to work, chopping and snipping and shaping, and as the hair flies to the floor I sit in this weird middle space between awe and shock. I can’t help it, I start to cry. I don’t want to cry. I don’t know why I’m crying—it’s involuntary. But tears well and spill, well and spill. I wipe them from my cheeks and Jools doesn’t say anything. She lets me cry.

  The feelings swirl in my mid-section big and wild—disappointment, sadness, excitement, anger, freedom.

  I feel free.

  Which I am, as evidenced by the years and years’ worth of boring, dead hair sitting on the ground all around me. A symbol of all of the things I no longer need.

  I say a silent goodbye. Thank you for your service, old Noni. But I will no longer be needing you. It’s time to let you go. I’ve decided to move in a new direction, try something new. I wish you all the best with your future endeavours. And then add a silent prayer. Please don’t look like shit. Please don’t look like shit. Please don’t look like shit.

  I look in the mirror. I do not look like shit. In fact, I think Jools was right. I look amazing.

  7

  ‘So, tell me again what happened?’ I stare at Callum Simons, a tall, lanky, grey-skinned grade ten kid, and do my best to not laugh in his face.

  ‘They said if I did it they’d give me twenty bucks.’

  ‘And you thought, hey you know what, that sounds like a great deal?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I look at his squishy, embarrassed face and a deep moment of self-reflection passes over me. This is my job. I am getting paid to have this conversation right now. ‘And so then you put the trumpet—’

  ‘Just on my butt, Miss. On it. Not in it. All the kids are saying in it. But it wasn’t that at all.’

  ‘Okay. So you put the trumpet on your bare butt and what?’

  ‘Farted.’ He says this with the deepest, sincerest tone I’ve ever heard in my whole life. ‘Or I thought it was just a fart, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘No, Callum, no, it was not.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Where was Ms Connelly while this was happening?’

  ‘She was helping the girls with their compositions in the practice room.’

  ‘Right, and then what happened?’

  ‘I just ran out, ay. Went to the bathroom and hid there until you came and got me.’ Tears spring into his little beady eyes, and my heart cracks a bit, because my fucking kryptonite is an emotional teenage boy.

  ‘As you can understand, Ms Connelly is really upset about this,’ I tell him as seriously as I can.

  ‘Yeah.’

  There’s a knock on the door. Niko walks in and stares at Callum, who winces in such a way that if he hadn’t just shit in a trumpet in front of his class, I would believe he’d just shit himself right now.

  ‘Mr Simons, can you step out for a minute, mate. Ms Blake and I need to have a chat.’

  Callum slinks out of the room and Niko shuts the door. I start laughing and Niko does too.

  ‘Jeez, Noni.’ He stops, completely caught off guard. ‘You look great.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I touch my head self-consciously and smile.

  I had been completely overwhelmed by the compliments I’d received that morning. Working with teenagers means that you get an instant—and very loud—throng of comments on your appearance the second you change anything. Today the kids had whistled and
smiled and said things like, ‘Good hair, Miss,’ or ‘I like your hair, Miss.’ A couple of female teachers had told me they loved it, and that they themselves could never be so brave, which made me sad, because I had felt like them too. One of the receptionists, Carol, who was just a little older than me, grabbed my arm in the photocopy room and blinked her big green eyes as she said, ‘Good on you, Noni. I wish I could do that. I’ve always wanted to.’

  ‘It’s just hair,’ I caught myself saying. But I knew it wasn’t just hair. I squeezed Carol’s hand and said, ‘If I can, then you can.’ She’d smiled at me, but I knew she didn’t believe me.

  ‘So, this is completely unprecedented,’ Niko says. ‘In my thirty-plus years of teaching, I’ve never had to deal with a kid shitting into an instrument.’ He is wired and smiling.

  ‘Neither have I.’ I try not to laugh. ‘It was a dare.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They dared him twenty dollars to fart into the trumpet and he…’ I search for the right words. ‘Followed through.’

  ‘Where was Miranda?’

  ‘In one of the practice rooms. She is pissed.’

  ‘Yeah I know. I’ve never seen a woman angrier in my whole life. And I’m Italian. She stormed into my office and yelled…’ He lowers his voice and mimics Miranda’s posh tone perfectly: ‘“What kind of shit show are you running here?” And I started laughing, which did not help the situation, Noni, let me tell you.’

  I giggle. ‘I don’t know what we’re meant to do.’

  He starts giggling too, all raspy, through his nose. He touches my shoulder in solidarity. I’m very aware of his hand on my body. If this is what it feels like for him to touch something as safe as my shoulder, I wonder what it would feel like for him to touch other parts of me.

  ‘Who is going to deal with the trumpet?’ I ask, when we settle down.

  ‘I called Tony. He’s furious too.’

  ‘There’s only a month of school left. We can’t expel him.’ I look at Niko sincerely. ‘He’s a good kid,’ I add.