Maggie's Going Nowhere

by Rose Hartley

‘Why do you think?’ His face was bleak. ‘I’ve got priors. They were trying to pin something on me.’

  ‘That’s so unfair.’ My voice broke a little on fair, full of righteous indignation. ‘Hey, stop walking. It’s not my fault they kept you in there.’

  He stopped and put out a hand to fend me off. ‘Maggie, I can’t see you anymore. This isn’t going to happen.’

  The moon was flat and bright, a silver disc. Perfectly suited to romantic encounters, not so good for getting dumped before you’ve even begun a relationship.

  ‘But we kissed,’ I said. ‘We haven’t even had sex yet and you kissed me. That means you like me.’

  ‘Yeah, I like you, but I like walking down the street without an ankle monitor more. You don’t know how easy it would be for those cops to write me up for something and send me down again. Resisting arrest, drunk in public, anything. I can’t be around someone like you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He waved his hands. ‘Because you’re a walking disaster and you’re made of Teflon. You blow things up but the shit doesn’t stick to you. It lands all over everyone else.’

  He walked away.

  ‘But I like you,’ I called after him. I almost said I love you, but that would be crazy, even for me. Anyway, he didn’t turn around.

  It was no time to fall apart. Jen was taking care of that side of things, swaying uneasily beneath the police station’s fluorescent sign as if she’d lost her anchor. I took her home.

  Someone was banging on Jen’s front door. I unwrapped my legs and my poor pounding head from the blankets, stumbled out of the bedroom and stood blinking in the light. Ugh, everything was too bright. I flung open the door to find PC Pink Cheeks standing on the doorstep, smile also bright. Offensively bright.

  ‘I found your caravan!’ he said. He was dressed in plain clothes: jeans and a T-shirt. I looked him up and down. ‘It’s my day off,’ he continued, ‘but there was a note on the file to call me if it came in. I collected it from the impound lot this morning. It was in Mentone, someone put a ding in it and left it by the beach. No bad damage, though. Is Jen here?’

  I stepped outside and pulled the door closed, putting a finger to my lips. Not because I didn’t want to wake Jen up, I just wanted him to talk softer because my head hurt.

  ‘Oh,’ he whispered. ‘Did she work a late shift?’

  I nodded. It’s not a lie if you don’t say the words out loud.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said, still whispering. ‘See? Hardly a scratch. Just a little dent.’

  We walked over to where the caravan was parked by the kerb and inspected it. It looked the same, almost. Same patched-up window, speed stripe with paint flaking off, small round brake lights at the back. My beautiful, familiar aluminium dream.

  ‘About Jen,’ I said, ‘she likes cats, but her ex would never get one. She wants three kids and soon, so don’t waste time. You have to laugh at her dirty jokes but have a very traditional sense of right and wrong.’ I grabbed him by the upper arm and stared into his wide eyes. ‘She likes a man to be independent but she thrives off kindness. Do you get my drift? Do you?’ I shook him a little.

  He looked slightly overwhelmed. ‘I’ve only met her once. You make it sound like I want to marry her or something.’

  ‘Frankly, you’d be crazy if you didn’t. She’s as faithful as a warhorse, cooks like Nigella and those tits are real. Plus she’s kind and smart and all the rest, and she works hard.’ I put my hands together to plead with him. ‘Please, deliver her from the walking V-necks she usually dates, and ask her out.’

  He paused at the door of my caravan. ‘But . . . what if she’s not interested?’

  ‘A risk, but worth it. Now, let’s see the damage.’

  ‘You didn’t even check if I was single.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Tommasio, I know you’re single. It’s written all over you.’

  On the outside, the caravan looked fine. A couple of scratches and one dent in the side, which could be beaten out. Inside, however, the cupboards had detached from the walls and splintered. My clothes and sheets were spread over the floor and my crockery had smashed.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said.

  ‘Whoops, I didn’t check inside,’ Tommasio said, gazing in at the mess.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘You said it was hand-built, didn’t you? Maybe the cupboards weren’t fixed to the wall properly. The crash must have dislodged them.’

  I sighed. ‘Well, thanks for bringing it back to me.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’ Tommasio looked anxious.

  ‘I dunno. Yeah, sure.’ I said it to appease him. I had absolutely no idea how to fix it.

  ‘Whoa, what happened?’ Jen had joined us without either of us realising. Tommasio jumped and blushed. Jen was dressed in her purple house pants, puffy-eyed, her golden hair in wild corkscrews. She poked her head around the caravan, lifting pieces of cupboard and holding them in place as if that would magically fix them. ‘Did someone smash it up deliberately?’ she asked.

  ‘I think they had a little crash and it dislodged the cupboards,’ Pink Cheeks said.

  ‘Or more likely the tow truck that brought it back from Mentone didn’t have proper suspension,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  Jen caught Pink Cheeks staring at her. ‘Excuse my appearance,’ she said, touching her hair. ‘Last night I discovered my fiancé was cheating on me. At our wedding rehearsal dinner.’

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘So . . . does that mean you’re single?’ She stared at him, dead-eyed. ‘I mean,’ he continued hurriedly, ‘here are the papers for the caravan. Just sign and it’s all yours. And again on this page. Okay. Great. Nice to see you. Bye.’

  A second later he popped his head back in. ‘Did you say at the wedding rehearsal dinner? Because apparently there was a huge bust-up at one last night. Was that yours?’

  ‘Yeah, that was hers,’ I said. ‘I got questioned for hours.’

  ‘Oh, wow. That was you.’

  ‘Yeah. And they tried to pin something on a guy I like, just because he’s been to jail before.’

  Jen brushed past us and shuffled back into the house. Pink Cheeks’s eyes followed her with longing.

  ‘Hey, Pink – hey, Tommasio, can you check on something for me?’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Make sure they’re not going to try to accuse Rueben Blackwood of doing any of the damage last night. He wasn’t involved.’

  ‘I can check, but I can’t do anything dodgy.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  The birds were singing in Jen’s lemon tree when I came into the kitchen, and my spirits rose with the steam that floated up from the coffee pot. Jen was morose at the table, not yet able to consider that Jono had given her a get-out-of-jail-free card. It would take some quality time on the couch to realise this, and for the pain to fade. I handed her a cup of coffee.

  ‘I was faithful to him for six years,’ she said, ‘and now I have to start again. At twenty-nine. Twenty-nine with pubic lice.’

  ‘You have a house and a career.’ I patted her on the shoulder. ‘You’re beautiful and a wonderful person, and you don’t live in a caravan.’

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t know what to do. What do I do?’

  ‘You just keep going.’

  ‘Who will I have kids with now?’

  ‘You’ll meet someone right away. They’ll be lining up at your door.’

  ‘My ovaries are going to shrivel. How will I have four kids if I don’t start until I’m in my thirties?’

  ‘You want four? I thought you wanted three.’

  ‘I might want four! I want the option of four!’ She lifted her T-shirt and pressed it to her face to soak up the tears.

  I stayed with Jen all day. It was like old times, watching bad movies and eating mac and cheese with potato gems. She cuddled into me on the couch and told me more of Jono’s secrets until I was convinced he was t
he King of Arseholes. Not that I had needed any more convincing. Apparently he would refuse to touch her if she let her leg hair grow out for more than a day.

  ‘Jen, that’s not normal.’

  ‘I know.’ She sniffed. ‘I was just in denial.’

  I refilled her bowl with mac and cheese and she took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. ‘What was the name of that accountant you dated for five seconds at uni? I wonder if he’s still single.’

  I thought for a second. ‘Wrestling deer guy? I can’t remember his name. He’d probably be more steady. No fly-in fly-out.’

  ‘How come you can’t remember his name?’

  I threw a potato gem into my mouth and burnt my tongue. ‘Because I didn’t date him.’

  ‘Oh, right. Just cheated on Salvatore with him.’ Jen became quiet. ‘Why do you find it so easy to cheat on people? You and Jono are alike.’

  ‘I was. Not anymore.’ I rolled my head back, ready for divine inspiration to shoot down from the ceiling and help me phrase this properly. All I got was bright spots in my vision from the light. ‘From now on, I’m ethically non-monogamous.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Jen sounded suspicious.

  ‘It’s like legal cheating, you agree on it beforehand. I read about it in an article.’ Before she could voice an opinion, I motored on. ‘Also, I’m gonna do stuff for you now, not just eat your food and borrow make-up.’

  ‘You did make me a coffee,’ Jen observed.

  ‘And that’s only the beginning! Now that you and Mum are talking to me again, that makes two people I’m going to be consistently nice to. And this rich old lady gave me good advice about not relying on men, which, when I remember her exact words, I’ll pass on to you. She was all about ethical non-monogamy, too. Spreading your eggs between many baskets.’

  ‘What are you going to do for money?’ Jen asked.

  ‘Maybe I’ll ask the guy at The Fainting Chair for a bar job.’

  I popped a potato gem in my mouth, thinking about how I’d come across in a film. Maybe they’d cast someone with big tits and tattooed eyeliner.

  ‘Do you think I could date a rich man?’ I asked Jen. ‘Like, not just an accountant or something, but a guy rich enough to be an angel investor for start-ups?’

  ‘Why do you ask? Did you meet an angel investor?’

  ‘No, I just wondered.’

  She scrolled through Netflix, contemplating the question with an absent gaze. ‘You’ve always dated men who made little or no money. I thought it was so you could say you weren’t relying on a man.’

  ‘Yeah, I relied on my mother instead.’

  ‘I think you could date a self-made rich man,’ she said. ‘But not family money.’

  ‘I wouldn’t fit in with a Toorak mother-in-law.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Maybe I should go to San Francisco to meet an angel investor,’ I said. ‘Then in two years I could be a pregnant thirty-something popping chia seeds and coconut water and talking about co-sleeping.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ She ran her finger around the now-empty potato gem bowl, collecting the salt, and licked it.

  ‘We shouldn’t have watched When Harry Met Sally. That was a mistake,’ I said. ‘No happily ever afters allowed from now on.’

  ‘The movies are a lie. No one can trust anyone.’ Jen’s voice was thick.

  I sat up. ‘Right. Jen. We have to get drunk. You need to get drunk. No more crying and wailing and mourning.’

  As afternoon turned to evening, I emptied a bottle of red wine into her, and began hating the world with a feverish fury. Nothing could be more unfair than Jen, dearest Jen, getting pubic lice from the King of Arseholes. And me! I was hard done by too. I had a shattered caravan and a broke mother and a seventy-thousand-dollar debt and a future filled with dole queues. And I was in love with a handsome criminal who was too sensible to date me.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ I said.

  Jen looked up at me with pink, puffy eyes and sniffed. ‘What?’

  ‘We have to get out of this house. What are we doing here, crying and wailing? It’s six pm!’ I swung the empty bottle around to accent my words. ‘It’s happy hour. We should be out having sex. Sex!’

  ‘Sex with who? The latte-loving hipsters of Collingwood? No thanks.’

  ‘What’s wrong with hipsters? They wear great shoes.’

  ‘They’re not real men. If we want men we’ll have to go somewhere else. Like St Kilda, or Chapel Street.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’ Two years beforehand I’d made a public vow never to set foot on the south side of the river again, and in particular never to walk down Chapel Street, with its gangs of roaming footy boys, or to frequent the bars of St Kilda, with the possible exception of seeing a band at the Esplanade Hotel.

  ‘I’m the one who’s got crabs!’ Jen shouted. ‘I’m the one who’s been cheated on! I can’t even sleep with anyone until I’ve got rid of them, so I think I will dictate where we go looking for sex!’

  ‘Okay. You’re right. We’ll go to St Kilda.’ St Kilda, spray-tan mecca. Where we would be surrounded by deep V-neck T-shirts showing hairy man-cleavage – or heavage, as I preferred to call it – and pomaded hair attached to too-groomed, too-plausible jerks.

  We prepared ourselves in silence. I slathered on mascara with gritted teeth while Jen patted concealer under her eyes to hide the dark circles. She lent me clothes again, a loose but short purple dress and gold heels. I looked almost too plausible myself.

  ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ Jen said. ‘I don’t know how to pick up in a bar.’

  I placed my hands on her shoulders. ‘I know exactly how you feel. You feel destined to be alone and celibate, like a monk but with none of the advantages of monkdom, like moral superiority and self-control and spiritual emancipation. You need to work on your aura. It’s always easier to get laid when you’re already getting laid. Your aura needs to exude a sense of: I don’t need it but I know you want it.’

  She sniffed. ‘God, how do you manage to sound so confident when you don’t know what you’re talking about? All right, call a taxi.’

  Jen was screaming drunk by the time we arrived at the beer garden. She threw the bottle of wine we’d been drinking in the taxi into the gutter and it smashed, leaking cheap red onto the asphalt. The bouncers looked us up and down as she marched past with her nose in the air and smirked before parting to let me through after her.

  The bar was dark and clean, decked out with glossy subway tiles and hanging lightbulbs dimmed to offer a bronze glow. It was packed with rich, tanned people. Jen found the guy nearest to the bar, who also happened to be quite good-looking, and grabbed him by the shirt collar.

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘Have you ever given your girlfriend an STI?’

  Alarm flashed across the man’s face and his eyes went wide, as if she’d asked him if he was into pegging.

  ‘Er, excuse me,’ he said, shuffling backwards.

  ‘Bastard,’ Jen called.

  A woman – presumably the man’s girlfriend – shot Jen a filthy look and muttered the word ‘psycho’ as she took him by the arm and turned her back.

  ‘Watch out for him! He can’t be trusted!’ Jen shouted as I dragged her away.

  I plonked her on a sofa in a dark corner and pushed a large glass of water towards her.

  ‘Okay, new plan,’ I said. ‘We’ll just sit here and try to be normal for a while.’

  ‘This was your idea,’ she hissed. ‘We’re finding a man.’

  ‘Why? You can’t even have sex! You’ll pass on the . . . you know.’

  ‘I can still give blowjobs.’

  ‘And what will you get out of it?’

  ‘I’ll get revenge on that bastard. I’ll text Jono now and tell him I’m about to suck someone’s salami.’

  She whipped out her phone and I tried to grab it out of her hand.

  ‘Jen! There’s no point. Don’t contact him now. Just act as if you don’t even know or c
are who he is, it will drive him crazy.’

  ‘The bastard gave me crabs!’ she shouted. ‘So shut up!’

  A few people turned around, in amusement or horror, I couldn’t tell which. Too much botox.

  ‘Jen, I think you’re the one who needs to be quiet.’

  I wrestled the phone out of her hand and threw it in my bag. Jen dropped her head into her hands and began to weep softly.

  ‘I want my mum.’

  I stroked her hair. ‘I can’t bring you your mum, she’s still in Sardinia or wherever. But I could probably get you my mum.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  I bundled her into a taxi and gave the driver my mother’s address.

  Chapter 26

  ‘Here you go, darling.’ Mum put a bowl of Moroccan chicken in front of Jen, who was still swaying from the wine. It was only eight-thirty but Mum was already wrapped in her fluffy robe. She turned to me. ‘I had a check-up at the hospital today. I’m going to need rehab because of you. I’ll probably have a limp forever. Look at me, I’m hobbling around like an ancient.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the hobble is very endearing,’ I told her. ‘In fact, I bet you’ll attract a man because of it, someone with caring instincts. Don’t you remember Britz, Dad’s friend who lost his eye playing squash? He got heaps of ladies. They loved his pirate patch.’

  ‘He got the sort of ladies who carry their dogs around in their handbags.’

  I gasped. ‘Remember that girlfriend of his who had a miniature poodle? And he accidentally ran it over with his golf cart because his depth perception was off?’

  Mum glared at me. ‘How would you like it if I gave you a hobble?’

  ‘I’d work it, baby. I’d get a silver-tipped cane.’

  ‘You’re hilarious.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Don’t reproduce, will you?’

  ‘I thought you wanted grandchildren?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘I’ve decided that your brother will give me grandchildren. You can look after me in my dotage.’

  ‘You better put me back in your will if you want me to look after you in your dotage.’

  ‘That will be decided on a weekly basis, when I assess your performance.’