Friends Like These

by Wendy Harmer

  Suze eased down the zip of her skirt and let her stomach bulge over her waistband. Jo was still glancing at her wrist repeatedly and gazing out the window. Watching Jo’s confidence unravel over the past year, Suze had sometimes despaired of them ever picking up the thread of their old conversations. She had always depended on Jo’s calm and sensible advice and was wearying of her new role as the one always offering encouragement. She dutifully set down her cutlery and asked the question that was plonked in the middle of the table, right next to the wooden salt and pepper mills. ‘You really miss the old dump, don’t you?’

  Jo nodded as she folded and refolded her table napkin. ‘I spent half my life there, but I don’t know that I made a difference to anything.’

  She hated fishing for reassurance from Suze like this but couldn’t help herself. In fact, she had been told, over and over, what a worthwhile and meaningful contribution she had made. She had a drawer stuffed full of letters and cards from girls and their parents: Dear Mrs Blanchard...Thank you so much for being my teacher...Our family is forever grateful...The care you have shown...I will never forget...

  Suze stepped neatly over the raked coals of Jo’s disappointments. ‘Well, you know something? Most of us don’t make a difference, Jo. Most of us just go about our business and live our lives in our own quiet way, and when we cark it there’s stuff-all to show for us having been on earth. But you’ve been lucky. Hundreds...thousands of those girls are better off for having had you as a teacher.’

  Today Jo was in a place where grateful sentiments were relics of the past. She picked at the crumbs of her bread roll. ‘Maybe a century ago the girls felt like they were lucky to have an education. But these days...’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ Suze nodded. ‘Not when you can be Paris Hilton. Changing your clothes twenty times a day and showing your bare bum to the paparazzi? Now there’s an ambition!’

  Jo managed a faint smile.

  ‘Listen, you’re going to make a brilliant marriage celebrant,’ Suze reassured her. ‘I listened to you often enough. I know how inspiring you can be. And, now I think about it, when I murder my husband, I’ll hire you for the funeral!’

  Jo laughed. Finally. ‘Yes, and I can think of a charming text that might suit the occasion: “Suzanne Gail Reynolds, you have the right to remain silent.”’

  ‘You’re forgetting, darls,’ Suze drawled, ‘I did remain silent. For seventeen long years.’ She picked a mussel shell from her bowl and slurped at the juice.

  Jo’s eyes widened in amazement. The idea that Suze was ever silent for long, about anything, was truly stretching credibility.

  Suze licked oily marinara sauce from her lips. ‘I slept with him last night.’ She drained her wine glass, dropped it on the table with a casual clunk, and raised her hand for one more.

  ‘You what?’ Jo leaned forward, keeping her voice low—she’d spent too many years on show in school assemblies to make a spectacle of herself in a public place. ‘You. Are. Mad! You’re going backwards. I thought you were happy with the separation.Shouldn’t you just get divorced? Clear the decks? What hope have you got of finding a new relationship with Rob still in your bed? It’s insane!’

  Suze spread butter on the remainder of her bread roll and pointed the greasy knife in Jo’s direction. ‘Sorry? Did I miss something here? Aren’t you still legally married to that bastard husband of yours?’

  ‘We have to wait a year. That’s this week,’ Jo muttered.

  The accusing cutlery was lowered.

  ‘Let’s just say,’ said Suze, ‘that we’re both going about this in our own way. See, Jo, the difference between you and me is that I don’t want to fall in love or get married ever again. That part of my life is over. I gave and gave and gave in that relationship and got nothing back. Got nothing to show for it. I’ll never sign over anything to a man again as long as I live. Not my heart, not my money, not my kids. So I might as well sleep with him. The sex still works, if nothing else does.’

  Jo nodded. She could follow Suze’s reasoning although it hardly led to a sensible conclusion.

  ‘I’m forty-four and I’m stepping into my female power. I’m on my own personal path,’ Suze declared. Jo winced at the tautology. ‘While you...you still want the full catastrophe. Ring the bells! Release the doves!’ Suze twirled her fork over her head and her bangles jangled as they slid to her elbow. ‘You still believe in true lurve. So tell me, who’s the mad woman here?’

  As her hand was already in the air, Suze waved for dessert. Jo declined. Just a small crème caramel, then.

  Was she a mad woman? Jo had devoted more time to the question than anyone knew. When she’d walked into the classroom to study for her civil celebrant’s certificate, she’d summed up her fellow students as a group of eccentrics who’d found themselves at various loose ends. There was the retired naval officer; the ageing TV soapie actress who had lately discovered her talent for clairvoyance; the 1983 Miss Australia who was now a breeder of Tibetan terriers; and the young mum of two who was secretary of her local netball club and had ‘a very supportive husband’. It had taken a while for Jo to understand that as the person with a solid, well-paying career that could bring rewards for the next twenty years, she was the odd one out.

  ‘Now what? You really are away with the pixies. You’re nervous about this afternoon, aren’t you?’ said Suze.

  ‘A bit,’ Jo admitted. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night. Simon and Kim. They didn’t say much in the email. I wonder how old they are? What will they expect? Do I look like a marriage celebrant?’ Jo tucked a stray curl behind her ear and squared her slim shoulders.

  ‘Look, this is what will happen,’ said Suze. ‘You’ll have a madly-in-love couple sitting on your couch holding hands. They won’t even care if you’ve got two heads. He’ll be staring into her eyes and she’ll be staring into his. And they’ll want to get married. Christ knows why! And Christ knows why you’d ruin the lives of two perfectly nice people by marrying them. To each other? Forever? To be miserable until they bloody die?’

  ‘Suze! You’re talking about my new career here.’ Jo had forgotten how unbelievably tactless she could be.

  Suze offered an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry. That was a joke. Seriously, of course you look like a celebrant! Do it the way you want and don’t be a damned doormat anymore.’

  That comment was thoughtless too. Jo was stung enough by it to ask: ‘You don’t really think I’m a doormat, do you?’

  ‘Not in a bad way, no. I’m just saying, this is your time. For so long you’ve been pleasing everyone else. It’s time to do it your way. No compromises.’

  Jo didn’t protest any further. She was tolerant of Suze in a way she knew most people couldn’t be, but then she had seen what others hadn’t. During her own travails over the past year Suze had supported her at every turn. They were just walking unfamiliar ground and would soon fall back into step with each other.

  ‘I will “do it my way”. I promise,’ said Jo. ‘Thanks for the therapy session, doctor. It was supposed to be a relaxing lunch for you.’

  ‘I can’t remember what relaxing is,’ Suze grimaced. ‘Who knew arranging flowers could be such bloody hard work?’

  The crème caramel arrived and, watching Suze devour it with relish, Jo regretted not ordering one for herself. That was what Suze was good at: she was greedy for life and ordered everything on the menu. Suze offered Jo her spoon for the last scrap. When Jo hesitated, Suze shrugged, scraped the bowl clean, ran her fingers over the surface of the china and licked them for the last of the sticky sweetness. She who hesitates is lost. Carpe diem. That was just one more thing Suze could teach her. Jo smiled indulgently.

  ‘Well, love you!’ said Suze finally. ‘But I’d better get back. Just make sure you hire me to do the flowers. Weddings, funerals...anything.’

  Suze stepped onto the sun-splashed footpath and rummaged in her bulging black leather hold-all for the key to her mini-van which, earlier in the morning,
had been crammed with buckets of dahlias, autumn leaves, gladioli and tulips from the flower market in Flemington. ‘You could say that between us we’ve got it covered,’ she said. ‘Hearts and flowers. Violets and violins.’

  ‘Orange blossoms and...er...’ Jo couldn’t think of a word that began with ‘o’ pertaining to weddings. So many of her conversations these days were like the unfinished crossword puzzles lying on the oak table in the sunroom. Too many blank spaces. Letters overwritten. Entire words scribbled out. The dependable logic that had always led her from one word, one thought, to another seemed to have deserted her.

  ‘Organs!’ shouted Suze from the window of her white van. With a burp of blue smoke it was swallowed by the heavy traffic.

  Jo laughed and started back up the street to her car, on (as Suze might say) ‘her own personal path’.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Of course, we could be married in Canada.’

  ‘Or the Netherlands, Belgium or France...’

  ‘You mean Spain.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not France, Spain! The Netherlands, Belgium or Spain. Honestly, Jo, sometimes I wonder if Kim ever listens to a word I say.’

  ‘I think Simon’s right. Maybe it is Spain...Because of the bullfighters.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Everyone knows bullfighters are gay. The capes, the tights, the embroidery. Hemingway was gay...Actually, that would make a great song in a musical—Any way you look at it, Hemingway was GAY...OLÉ!’

  ‘Hahahahaha.’

  ‘Anyway, the thing is, we know we’re not legal here in Sydney. We could go to Canada, but all our friends can come and celebrate with us if it’s here, and that’s the main thing, don’t you think?’ asked Simon.

  Actually, Jo had been having trouble thinking of anything at all in the last fifteen minutes since she had opened her front door to discover that Simon and Kim were two men. Thankfully, her decades of training at parent–teacher nights had kicked in and her best professional smile and firm handshake were on automatic even as her mind went blank.

  ‘When Simon proposed to me it was the happiest moment of my life,’ said Kim. ‘You have to understand that the idea of a public blessing for a lifelong partnership like ours is something...’

  ‘That we never dreamed could happen,’ Simon finished. ‘So, say you’ll marry us.’

  ‘Please, say you will,’ added Kim. They snuggled closer on Jo’s couch, holding hands and looking at her with wide imploring eyes—a pair of ringtail possums sitting on a branch.

  Jo hesitated. This situation had been covered in her course work under ‘same-sex commitment ceremonies’. But (curse her pathetic, arrogant lack of imagination) she had pictured herself under a fragrant archway of jasmine on a green lawn marrying Simon in a black suit and Kim in a lovely white dress. She just was not expecting to be in this situation for her very first wedding. And that was rather stupid, seeing that homosexuals made up a good part of the population of the Eastern Suburbs.

  The monitum—the legal ‘warning’ she had already memorised and was obliged to utter—was useless here: ‘I am duly authorised by law to solemnise marriages, according to law. Before you are joined in marriage in my presence and in the presence of these witnesses, I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into which you are now about to enter. Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.’

  ‘Man’ and ‘woman’. That was the sticking point. She wondered what Father Patrick would say. What her father, Reverend Albert Brown, would think. But, more than that, what, in God’s name, did she think?

  Jo shifted in her armchair and brushed back a curl from her forehead. ‘I need to know that you are truly committed to this relationship. It comes with its own unique tests of faith,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘We know that already!’ Kim was indignant. ‘We know we’re not equal in the eyes of the law, or the church. We’re aware we’re second-class citizens. We get it.’ He sank back into the squashy cushions on Jo’s couch and folded his arms across his chest.

  Simon placed his hand on Kim’s knee to calm him. ‘It’s okay, honey, she has to ask this stuff,’ he said.

  Jo was thankful for his diplomacy. She asked a question that might buy some time while she considered it some more. ‘Tell me about how you got together. I adore true-love stories.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe where I proposed!’ Simon told her.

  Jo just bet she wouldn’t.

  ‘In a kayak! We were right underneath the Harbour Bridge and Kim was up the front paddling...’ Simon looked at his partner adoringly. ‘I was watching his broad back and the way he was using the paddle to expertly steer us through the shipping channel, and I just thought, this is a perfect metaphor for our lives! There we were, in this flimsy little boat dodging huge yachts and ocean liners and I trusted Kim, implicitly, to get us there.’

  ‘Wherever “there” is.’ Kim joined the telling of the tale. ‘So he yelled from behind, “Will you marry me?” Talk about a back-seat driver!’

  ‘He said “yes” and I just cried and cried...’

  ‘And then he fell in! Man overboard!’

  ‘I didn’t know I was drowning. They call it “raptures of the deep”.’ Simon clutched at his heart in a dramatic gesture.

  Jo watched them watch each other. She saw the open gazes, the knowing sideways looks, fluttered lashes and matching arched eyebrows. They talked in half-sentences, reached for the other, crossed knees to touch ankles, laughed in unison. It seemed that together they made up one person. That old cliché.

  They looked like a couple (as much as any two people ever did). Jo guessed they were in their mid-thirties. They were both trim and muscular, immaculately dressed with regular, handsome features, almost mirror images of each other, although Simon was taller and darker, Kim shorter and fairer. Simon was a real estate agent. He possessed the clever wit and disciplined mind. Kim, a personal trainer, had the physical prowess and easy laugh. An attractive pair, by any standard. But it was the way they were in thrall to each other and then, beyond that, in orbit around the gravitational pull of something bigger than themselves, that convinced Jo they were in love. And wasn’t that part of her new job? To divine whether the two people in front of her were worthy of a wedding, with her as a witness? She supposed that she was now some sort of ‘emotional detective’—the Miss Marple of Matrimony—who might anticipate where future trouble lay. Jo prided herself that she understood human nature, but then, she reminded herself, her instincts had failed her in her own marriage. Could she do any better with other people’s relationships?

  At first Jo had felt uncomfortable with Simon and Kim’s unselfconscious kisses and cuddles, but now she couldn’t help wondering whether she and JJ had ever been so much in love. There was a time, twenty-two years ago, when she and her new husband, Jimmy John Blanchard, must have felt such passion for each other. Jo could scarcely remember what it felt like.

  She could recall the pain of childbirth. She could remember the wretched hot fever and churning nausea from bouts of the flu and gastro, and the blinding shock when she’d fallen down a flight of stairs at Central train station and broken her ankle. She held a memory of a scorching forty-four-degree Sydney day when the heat had made her curly hair crackle. She could locate the feeling of sitting on a tartan picnic rug in The Domain when the children were small, watching them tumble on the grass, and being overwhelmed by contentment. She could call up emotions of anger, disappointment, even boredom. But she could not, for the life of her, conjure what it felt like to be in love.

  But she had been in love. Must have been.

  JJ had first come into Jo’s life in 1979 when he had taken the role of Sky Masterson in a combined schools production of Guys and Dolls. A busload of boys from Canonbury had been prescribed to add a dash of testosterone to the bubbling cauldron of oestrogen that was the DPLC Ab
bess Theatre Players. Canonbury had been the perennial dancing partner for the Darling Point girls for almost a century.

  Jo was fourteeen years old then and knew every song from the musical by heart. Her mother Margaret had played the soundtrack over and over as she swept the floors and dried the dishes, singing that she loved her daughter ‘a bushel and a peck’. They’d watched the film together one weekend when Jo was home from college. She with a crush on Marlon Brando and her mother swooning over Frank Sinatra as they sat together on the red velveteen sofa munching homemade melting moments biscuits.

  Young Josephine Margaret Brown had been mesmerised by JJ’s performance as she watched him from the front stalls. As he swaggered around the stage, Jo thought him every bit as chiselled and broad-shouldered as Marlon himself. During his duet with head girl Melissa Hughes, who had taken the role of Salvation Army Sister Sarah Brown (but was unfortunately blonde and podgy and not at all like Jean Simmons from the movie), Jo had mouthed the words to ‘I’ll Know When My Love Comes Along’.

  It was nine years later, oddly enough at a Gangsters and Molls charity ball at the Menzies Hotel for the Darling Old Girls and the Old Canons, that Jo again found her leading man. She had been selling raffle tickets for an all-expenses-paid trip to the Wrest Point Hotel Casino in Hobart and he had flourished a fat cigar, fanned a handful of twenty-dollar notes in front of her nose, and bought her entire ticket book.

  He, impressive in a double-breasted suit and spats, was still a dead ringer for Marlon Brando. She, a willowy brunette in a red satin cheongsam, was more like Jean Simmons than Melissa Hughes had ever been. After a few glasses of champagne, Jo had regaled everyone at JJ’s table with details of his teenage star turn at the Abbess Theatre and how she had been his secret admirer. He’d been flattered, laughed, and they had fallen into a spontaneous reprise of ‘A Woman in Love’. Their corny, off-key effort had won them a round of applause from former classmates and teachers. He bought her a charity balloon and she’d won a Mikimoto pearl bracelet. A betrothal gift, as it turned out to be. They’d both later delighted in telling their children the story at bedtime.