Turbulence

by Maggie Rainey-Smith

  Adam blew a final rebellious smoke-breath out the open window. He shook a few Smints from a fiddly plastic container and popped them on his tongue. Yuck. They were spearmint flavoured, but he had to suck them as nowadays he avoided unnecessary crunches on his back teeth. He glanced again at the urgent red and silver bag on his desk, then decided to join Martin on time this morning: show some good will, give the kid some credit, act keen and eager … after all, wasn’t he hoping the little bastard would buy the business from him some day? Curiosity got the better of him momentarily; he turned back and flipped the courier pack over to check who had sent it. Overland Adventurers Reunion — what was that?

  It was halfway through the meeting (Martin had a PowerPoint presentation going, explaining the benefits of lean manufacturing and the impact of the internet on global markets) when Adam remembered who Overland Adventurers were. He was transported from his role as factory manager to a younger version of himself, a time ‘before’ that hinted at an ‘after’ quite different from this.

  He and Judy were in Europe on a bus tour with other Australians and New Zealanders, all of them on a voyage of self-discovery. As Martin mentioned Italy, Adam saw the Uffizi. He thought of Judy’s fascination with Cosimo of the Medici family, the murderous philanthropist who cultivated the arts and literature. Martin spoke of Spain, and Adam saw Judy haggling over a handbag in a market in Madrid. (The handbag, as it turned out, was not real leather. But Judy had held on to it for years out of sentiment.)

  Martin was in China. Adam had never been to China but Martin was angling for a business trip later this year. (The handbag had been dark green and soft to the touch. It had not occurred to either of them to check for authenticity. Adam had helped Judy barter the price down. The crafty stallholder had thrown in a shoulder strap at the last minute. Judy insisted on paying extra pesetas to cover the cost, and before they knew it, they were paying more than the asking price, instead of less.)

  Now Martin was closer to home. He was exploring the Australian markets and explaining how the exchange rate had to be monitored to ensure that the cost of raw materials didn’t undercut the profit down the track when they exported those materials in their manufactured form. He looked directly at Adam, a less-than-subtle reference to a balls-up three years earlier when Adam had expanded production on the back of the exchange rate, only to have to pay through the nose for the imported components and finish the year in the red.

  (Adam wondered what happened to the handbag, whether Judy still had it … then he noticed Martin’s tie.)

  ‘Money down the drain!’ said Martin, vehemently.

  The production meeting over, Adam headed back to his broom cupboard. More and more, he was needed less and less. Martin was running the factory, which was what Adam had intended — well, mostly. He opened his email and checked his inbox. Spam mail from a Hector Coon. He pushed the delete button wondering who Hector Coon might be: was it just a made-up name to tempt him to open the attachment? He’d crashed the entire production system opening spam mail from one Cora Pokes. The name had fascinated him. He had been drawn to double-click in spite of his doubts. As a result, he now pushed delete on anything suspicious and had missed out on two crucial meetings with suppliers. Now he opened Google. Heather put her head around the door and mouthed ‘tea’. Adam nodded. She glanced down at the unopened courier pack and backed out the door affecting nonchalance, but he knew from the shuffle of her shoulders she was itching to open it.

  Adam turned the package back over. He’d planned to do a search on Overland Adventurers before opening the package, but Heather’s obvious curiosity piqued his own. He squeezed the package once more and then tried to rip it open. Courier bags were impenetrable unless you had a pair of scissors handy: the seal concertinaed but did not budge. He was hunting for a pair of scissors when Heather returned with a mug of tea. She placed it expertly on a company coaster and moved the courier bag slightly to the left, so that if Adam spilled his tea, it would not soil the package. Their eyes met. Adam thanked her; he could have asked her for scissors but he had waited to open the package, and now he wanted to do it himself. He turned back to his computer — Heather’s cue to leave. She didn’t. She hovered in the doorway.

  ‘I can see you’ve tried to rip it open.’

  As if it had just occurred to her. Before he could respond, she was out the door and heading down the corridor to her own office, intent on returning with scissors.

  He clicked on the first heading Google had retrieved and it turned out to be a website on tourism in Panama. He feigned interest until Heather returned and then distracted her with a discussion about Martin’s tie.

  Martin wore ties that Adam despised and the women in the office loved. Rather than cycle to work wearing these outlandish things, he kept them in a drawer at work and donned them for production meetings. There was his Austin Powers shagadelic (a favourite); a keyboard tie (was Martin musical?) and ‘Who Killed Kenny?’ (who was Kenny?).

  Today Martin was wearing a white silk tie and in the bottom left-hand corner was a blood-splattered plughole. Adam had noticed it when Martin pin-pointed him during the PowerPoint presentation, going on about the exchange rate, harping on about a loss situation, all the time his eyes on Adam. Focusing on Martin’s tie instead of his face was one of Adam’s strategies for disengagement. That and the fact that he had been miles away (years, actually) reminiscing about a more important loss at the time.

  ‘So, tell me. What’s with the white silk tie and the blood stains his nibs is wearing?’

  His nibs. Whenever Adam used that term, Heather knew they were colluding. He didn’t often let his guard down with her but when he did, there was a reason. This time, she realised, he was putting off opening his courier package. But she didn’t mind. She’d been dying to have a yarn about the daft ties.

  ‘It’s called Murder,’ she said triumphantly. She didn’t approve and was glad of the opportunity to say so. A production manager ought to set an example and blood on a tie (albeit fake blood) was hardly that — especially when you considered Martin’s role in implementing new health and safety measures (a whole manual had to be produced and Heather had employed two temps over two months to complete the task). And so she went, on and on, inviting Adam either to agree or to distance himself but knowing he would do neither because he was simply stalling by indulging her.

  Adam sipped his tea and listened. He watched Heather’s mouth open and close, and noted the way a small muscle in her right cheek vibrated with the effort. Finally, she ran out of steam.

  ‘I’ll come back for the scissors. Now don’t you lose them.’ And with that she left the broom cupboard, satisfied at having vented her feelings about the bloody tie without overstepping the mark. Adam had given her one of his you’re almost indispensable looks that he saved for these sorts of occasions. It implied he agreed with her, and yes, he knew he’d started this, but now he was calling a halt to it.

  He re-entered Overland Adventurers into Google and this time he refined his search by adding the year that he and Judy were in Europe together. On the knocker. Up it came, a website dedicated to a reunion of Overland Adventurers. He slashed through the plastic seal of the package and pulled out a soft toy wrapped in mauve crêpe. A battered brown kiwi. The beak was faded yellow and had a cigarette burn on the end of it. One foot was missing. It was their kiwi bird: the mascot Judy had purchased at the downtown duty-free shop; they’d named it Michael after their Ocker tour leader. He imagined Judy’s delight; then her distress.

  Adam fondled Michael, lifted the kiwi up to his nose and sniffed. It wasn’t as soft as he expected. The felt had matted and hardened with age. It smelled fusty.

  He closed his eyes and sniffed again, just as Martin popped his head through the doorway. Martin watched in surprise then carefully, almost graciously, stepped backwards and departed down the hall, not quite tip-toe, but close.

  Adam was in Rome in a small café close to the Trevi Fountain drinking Harvey Wallbange
rs in the Italian sunshine. Judy was there beside him. They had booked cheap fares out of Luton, which had meant sleeping overnight at the airport to catch an early flight. The price had included hotel accommodation and anglicised Italian food to cater for the staid English tourists who wanted chips with everything from veal to pizza. They’d abandoned the terrible food for something authentic and feasted on stuffed pasta rings floating in chicken broth — a far cry from his mother’s macaroni cheese — and their first ever tortellini.

  Before he could savour the tortellini his mobile burped, bringing him back to the present. The phone screen was flashing reminders that he chose to ignore. Adam placed the battered kiwi gently on the desk and fished inside the courier bag, curious to know who had sent it. Inside was an invitation.

  Overland Adventurers Reunion, Darling Harbour, Sydney.

  His own name carefully handwritten (by whom?), in ink not ballpoint, the ‘A’ an elaborate and personalised flourish.

  Adam checked the reunion website for dates, scrolled through the details, looking for names he recognised. And then it occurred to him: Judy would have an invitation too. It was odd, he thought, how Louise had remained in contact with Judy. A friendship of sorts. They both seemed intent on holding on to something. At first it had been a civilised hostility. But now there was a genuine affection and interest in each other’s lives. Now and then, they all got together, a barbecue or something, usually organised by Louise.

  Adam and Judy had no future together, barbecues aside, but they had a past — marriage … and Michael. There he was again. Full circle. It always happened. No matter how hard Adam shook the past away and focused on the future, some things remained true. Whatever he did, they always reverberated.

  Some things were vivid. The hawthorn hedge at the top of the road where they burrowed, climbed, laid claim, and where Judy tore her foot on a thorn. Blood, vivid, sticky, and he’d licked it clean. The sweet ache of love. Virgins. The future bright and shiny, something you could hold. (Later, working in the foundry and climbing the management ladder, the future was something he could mould.)

  Banana passionfruit growing clustered in the hawthorns. Splitting their pale yellow skins and sucking the orange flesh of black-eyed fruit. Wild passionfruit, now a forbidden fruit. But back then it wasn’t a weed. Was this what happened to wild passion with time? Once crowned in glory, it was outlawed.

  Bare feet on asphalt, popping tar bubbles, faces flat, skin on gravel, determined to spot the moment a mirage happened. Lakes in rural roads — the magic of a hot summer. Taking bets on how many steps forward until the lake vanished and another one appeared further on, and on, and on. Lakes forever if they wanted.

  Adam driving while Judy changed gears … Judy consoling him when his mother died, sharing his tears. He gave up smoking, she started … they fell out and fell back in again. Losing his virginity, taking hers — did he take it? Was it something you took? Did she give it to him? Blood again, but victory in it for both of them.

  A pregnancy scare. Was he scared? Of course, he was terrified. And it was then they decided to go to university before they ended up stuck in suburbia with nappies forever, instead of lakes.

  Separation, reunion, achievement, failure (his). Judy went on to complete a degree and he found work at the foundry. Failure turned to success. Being apart meant that the spark was fanned (fuelled perhaps by absence). Their love grew, demanded their consideration, acquired a life of its own. Oh, he dated other local girls and he never asked what Judy did those three years at Canterbury but, inevitably, like the lakes on rural roads, their love reappeared, and reappeared — and they lay down, cheeks against the gravel, to ensure that it did.

  Then Michael arrived, fingers and toes intact, teeth erupting when they should, a head circumference promising greatness, and almost-aqua eyes. Later, freckles on his nose that threatened to spread across his face; teeth so wide apart that his smile nearly whistled.

  Chapter Three

  The doctor was on The Terrace in an impeccably new and impressively neutral modern building. To please Louise, Adam had booked in for a prostate check-up, even though he was certain he was too young to worry. When Louise showed concern it was easier to comply than to complain. She was a practical woman and treated her own doctor the way Adam’s mum had treated the grocer — with lists, taking along her symptoms and expecting in return, at the very least, a prescription. It wasn’t as if he had any symptoms, but a yearly check-up was sort of a bottom-line responsibility — he grinned at his own pun.

  He shared the lift up to the third floor with a pregnant woman, her screaming toddler and an older man wearing a square of blood-stained white gauze on his sunken cheek. They all unloaded on the same floor. Adam waited courteously for everyone to disembark, with his foot against the shuddering lift door, and the toddler slipped between his legs.

  The receptionist chose that moment to become absorbed in a problem on the computer. Adam took a seat and waited, as you did in a waiting room. There were tropical fish to watch, business magazines to read, and a rocking horse to entertain the toddler and his pregnant mum. She had thick ankles (fluid retention, or just unlucky) and she was a spreader. Judy had been one of those. Some women jutted out all baby, and others swelled sideways and smothered motherhood until near the end. It was hard to tell if this woman was six months or nearly full term. She looked at him looking at her and broke out in red patches that spread upwards unevenly towards her chin. He looked away.

  Surgeries, no matter how high-tech and impersonal (and regardless of rocking horses), always reminded Adam of his childhood — he recalled the waft of antiseptic, waist-high wooden panelling, the stand-alone pink stucco building, separate from commerce, hallowed. A time when people believed the doctor knew best and you wore your best underwear just in case … because even earache could mean an injection in your backside. Pink plasters (he could still smell them) and little wooden ice-block sticks that the doctor used so he could view your tonsils.

  Say ah.

  And the doctor’s thumb at the edge of his mouth, coaxing a smile from him.

  David, his GP, was also Judy’s GP when she was pregnant with Michael. He’d seen them through the miracle of conception (look, Adam, that shadow is the future), the spreading (rub this on your breasts for stretch marks, Judy), the birth (pant, Judy, pant, while I unravel the cord).

  Look, Adam, look … It’s a boy!

  David finally put his head around the door and acknowledged the full surgery. He wore a black suit and carried a folder (could have been a human resources consultant). He managed to catch Adam’s eye and imply both greeting and apology in one glance. And then he motioned towards the old chap who was now holding the gauze against his cheek, which appeared to be seeping blood.

  Ah, so he wasn’t first in line — more time to worry about the indecency of a prostate check-up. He flipped through a magazine, imagined conversations with David making wisecracks about the Grand Canyon and himself responding with hearty wisecracks about wisecracks. They would exchange pleasantries about diving (Adam’s passion) and golf (David’s). A hole in one!

  The screaming toddler stopped screaming and began rocking. Back and forth, eek, creak, eek, creak, eek, and the silence grew louder. Adam was forced to notice the toddler, observe his chubby knees as they bent in earnest pushing the wooden horse forward, backward, forward, backward, but actually more forward, as the force and determination of the toddler were pushing the rocking horse along the parquet floor, dangerously close to the tropical fish tank. The child’s mother seemed unaware of what was happening, and so Adam was forced to take action. He stood up and positioned himself beside the rocking horse, found himself murmuring toddler-talk to appease and mollify the toddler, as he carefully moved both the rocking horse and its rider back to safety.

  A grateful grin from the pregnant mum — followed by increased determination from the toddler as he attempted to eek, creak, eek the rocking horse back into danger, peeking across at Adam now
to see if he noticed.

  ‘Adam.’

  David was looking at him from across the room, and the old chap with the sunken cheek had a fresh piece of gauze on his face as he exited. Adam was nearly tempted to offer the pregnant mum and determined toddler his slot, but changed his mind as quickly as the thought appeared … eek, creak, eek.

  On the bed, curled in the foetal position, it was hard to feign nonchalance. David asked after Louise, Frankie and Vanessa. No mention of Judy. Adam replied as best he could, his voice muffled by fresh white sheets. It was similar to a visit to the dentist. Polite conversation when you were least likely to respond — but then it wasn’t really about you.

  ‘Frankie’s taken up diving.’

  And at that moment, David discarded the disposable glove, dropping it carefully into a bin, which he kicked under the bed as he spoke.

  ‘Diving,’ he said, his voice courteous, disinterested, his face registering momentary distaste as he dropped the glove.

  Leaving the surgery, Adam walked down The Terrace past the Wellington Club and beneath the huge old pohutukawa, overnight shelter to hundreds of birds that painted the pavement below with their excretions. He ducked, dodging further droppings, but there were none. It amused him that the most prestigious club (well, Judy’s partner Phillip was a member) was carpeted outside with bird shit.

  His car was parked under the motorway up towards Toast, one of Judy’s haunts. She’d been on his mind all week because of the stuffed kiwi. Adam checked his watch. It was a quarter to nine and he was already late for the production meeting. It wouldn’t hurt just to look in at Toast to see if Judy was there. She often stopped for a morning coffee to read the paper before starting work.