Watermark

by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  As the evenings turned into a regular monthly occasion in his home, Harrison became sullen. Tonight, particularly, he could feel himself regressing. He’d done twelve tax assessments and handed out five tissues, three refunds and nine accounts. He took another phone call, made understanding murmurs and then called out to his wife, interrupting her analysis of de Man and defacement. ‘Brook. If you hadn’t already guessed, since starting time was an hour ago, Rachael can’t make it.’

  ‘Thanks, Harrison. Can you bring out the artichoke dip?’

  He paused and laughed to himself, said his next thought under his breath and then stooped through the doorway with mock apology and said it out loud. ‘She can’t make it because little Gonorrhoea is feeling poorly.’

  His wife excused herself and did a clumsy half-run into the kitchen, hissing at him. ‘Gymea. Her daughter’s name is Gymea. Like the lily.’

  ‘You know my hearing, Brook. My mistake. I’ll grab another bottle of wine. Your buddies can sip it while they annihilate you.’

  ‘Get yourself together.’ Her lips hardly moved. ‘Who are you tonight?’

  He paused for a moment, thinking he would like to throw a plate. Then, not knowing what else to do, he unzipped his trousers, pulled them down and flung them with one foot across the floor.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

  He felt momentary regret, but the impetus, the euphoria of feeling out of control, kept him going. He reefed his shirt over his head and his Y-fronts down his legs.

  ‘Harrison.’ It was a whisper. She watched him dart across the room to the purple nylon curtain she’d bought to tie in with the potted violets. Watched him fling it open theatrically and turn on the cold tap.

  ‘Just a little scrub. A little scrub behind the ears. A little soap in the mouth. I’m so pleased we kept the shower in the kitchen. It’s just so … so … help me, darling, what did Ahmed call it?’ He was shouting now. ‘Quaint. It’s so God-damned quaint I want to top myself.’

  • • •

  Harrison sat, straight-backed, waiting for his appointment with the masseuse. His plastic chair was connected to four others by a fused metal bar. Next to him, in a basket, was a tattered brochure listing various ailments. He’d mentally ticked them off before his first appointment. Headaches? Yes. Stiff neck? Yes. Stress and Depression? Highly likely. Poor memory? Can’t recall. Following on from the long- and short-term benefits of remedial massage were pictures of feet dipped in water. Brown discoloration meant detoxification from cellular debris. White foam related to toxicity in the lymphatic system. A patient testimonial was taped on the window, written by a man whose bad back had been cured after years of no improvement from traditional medicine. The letter was on an angle. Each week Harrison found that somewhat ironic and considered straightening it.

  He’d called the massage parlour on a whim, the day after what he now referred to, in his mind, as the cold-shower incident. After the hasty departure of Brook’s guests, they’d had an all-out brawl. Harrison had suggested that he was just giving her some material. She’d said that his character was so flawed, so unredeemable, no-one would believe it.

  In the fallout, Brook removed their house from the list of locations for Writers’ Group. He felt bad for the way he’d treated her. Maybe she was just searching for something, trying to make sense of the world through her words, making up for something she’d lost. He could understand that.

  The woman who’d answered the phone of Qi Massage had spoken very little English and had treated his appointment like a takeaway order.

  ‘Massage?’

  ‘Yes. My neck. It’s mainly my neck. I … I think I’ve put something out. People tell me my shoulders are up around my ears.’

  ‘Neck and shoulder?’

  ‘Yes. I think so. I’m not really sure. To tell you the truth, I feel bad all over.’

  ‘We do no happy ending.’

  Harrison cleared his throat. He considered hanging up. ‘No, fine. I’m married,’ he added, as though that made a difference. He thought about telling the woman how much trouble his wife had with endings, happy or otherwise.

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Well, what’s your availability? I was thinking today, but that’s probably not … I mean …’

  ‘You wan’ today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One okay?’

  ‘One o’clock, yes, okay, good. Thank you.’

  That was two months ago. This was his seventh visit. The masseuse ended up being a masseur, always dressed in a pale grey T-shirt and matching tracksuit pants. He had a downcast face and a composed, slow manner. At the start of each session he would motion to Harrison to put his wallet and wedding ring in a plastic basket and then pull the curtain and wait for him to undress. It was supposed to be therapeutic. For Harrison, it was sheer hell. He got something from the visits, though, something that had very little to do with the massage. With his head nestled in the table’s cradle, this man – a man whose name he didn’t even know – saw him exposed in every way: naked, in pain and, in between gasps, revealing in muffled tones the details of his life. It was as though, with his face buried, he could say anything.

  The man never responded. Perhaps he didn’t understand a word of it. He moved around Harrison’s body, pummelling his muscles with his elbows, smoothing his forearms over his back and occasionally sighing deeply with what Harrison thought was disappointment.

  At first Harrison’s monologue was banal: his morning at work, that sort of thing. He’d apologise when he felt pressure on the knots in his neck. ‘Very tight,’ he’d whimper, trying to breathe through the pain. But he didn’t complain. Didn’t even ask him to be a bit gentler. In some respects, he felt he should accept whatever punishment was dished out to him.

  The transaction was always cash. There was no other option. No rebate. No margin for recourse. No hope of a refund. Given his line of work, Harrison found this both alarming and oddly appealing. He hadn’t mentioned the visits to Brook. All he knew was that in between the aching, the sonorous exhalations of the masseur pressing against his flesh and the echoing sound of his own woes, he had moments of clarity.

  • • •

  The man motioned for him to come into the room. Harrison followed, then stripped and folded his clothes onto a stool. It was a now-familiar sequence. He nuzzled his head into the gap in the bed and closed his eyes. He heard a tap running, a bottle being squeezed and the air filled with a scent like the oils Brook burned at home. He’d read the label once. There was lavender and cinnamon, maybe ylang ylang, he couldn’t remember. He felt the press of oiled hands on his back and closed his eyes. He was embarrassed by his next thought: that the weight of this man’s hands, the scent in the air, the deviation in his day that no-one knew about, aroused him.

  Today Harrison talked about his wife. How they had met, in a pub of all places. How she’d had long brown hair then, and an infectious laugh that floated in and out of their conversation. How he could never quite keep up with her. His voice sounded hollow. It had a bit to do with the acoustics of speaking into a void, but it was more than that.

  He spoke about Ethan. He didn’t mention the guilt, though. The guilt he felt for giving up a part of himself he could never get back. Maybe that’s what had pushed him into the tedium of accountancy. To be transparent. To be called to account for one’s actions. The remorse had always followed him, like a shadow. It crept up on him, unannounced, in those moments when no-one was watching. When he observed the open-mouthed slumber of his son. When he made the trip back to his dad’s house and sat up in the sand dunes, alone. Alone and watching the surf falter, level, shuffle back out to sea.

  The masseur slid his arms along Harrison’s back in smooth, steady sweeps. He worked on his forearms and hands. He pressed against each knuckle and pulled at his fingertips.

  Harrison said how much he hated the bus trips home from work each afternoon. It took forever on the all-stops. In peak hour, the pedestrians made more progress.
He thought about his neighbours’ houses pressed against his, and how they were driving the breath right out of him.

  ‘I used to walk to the beach from home when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘I’d have a body surf before I got on the school bus. In the so-called cool group. Always a spot on the back seat. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it. There was this girl, Mimi. Her parents owned the milk bar. In our last year she’d pinch cigarettes and chewy for us to share behind the bus shelter.’ He thought about Mimi and her long limbs and sweet, smoky breath. The white mark on her neck from her bikini top. The way she always folded her arms and rested one foot against the other when she sat. As though protecting herself from something.

  The last image of her was always the same. Now he could see it as though he were just an observer. Someone watching a pair of miserable kids in a waiting room. The boy resting his fist against the girl’s belly, and the girl clutching onto it. Payment was upfront. They gave him his change and he said no. Later he thought that was even worse. Like a tip. A thank you for good service. She’d had to go in on her own.

  Harrison was glad his face was hidden. He moved his eye against the towel. ‘Dad still lives there. Sits out on the back deck listening to jazz and rabbiting on about his citrus. I miss him though, silly old bugger.’

  The masseur started the feather-like brushing he did right before the final hacking across Harrison’s shoulder-blades, then hesitated. ‘You go home,’ he said.

  Harrison felt his face flush. The guy did understand him, he just wasn’t interested. He wanted to finish up early.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t usually go on like this.’ He rolled over and then eased himself into a sitting position with his legs dangling over the edge of the bed.

  The man paused, then shuffled to a timber dresser and pulled out a creased photo. It was a bridge gracefully arced over still brown water. The trees in the background formed the same curvature. The branches could have been soothing the river or weeping into it. He put his hand on his chest. ‘My home,’ he said. He smiled a little, but in his smile was a kind of bleakness. He looked at the photo again before putting it back, then let out an awkward laugh and walked back to the table. ‘Head down. Karate chop, then done,’ he said.

  Home. Part of Harrison ached to return and part of him just ached.

  • • •

  On the first day of school holidays they left mid-morning after agreeing they’d be gone before seven. The day was already marred by a tacky heaviness in the air and the annoying habits of ‘someone’. This was the term Brook now used to refer to Harrison’s thoughtlessness. Someone could have brought the washing in. Someone could have checked the bathroom window was closed. Someone could have fed the Gosanke.

  The night before, they’d slept fitfully, their limbs tossing over each other, settling in familiar grooves and pulling away again. Harrison had woken to his wife rifling around in her bedside drawer. ‘I dreamt it,’ she’d said. ‘All the words were there on the page. Every tiny detail. Words I didn’t even know I knew. At one point, I was speaking another language. Fluently. I dreamt it and it’s bloody well gone.’

  Harrison wiped the sleep from his eyes and went downstairs to brew a pot of tea. He took it up to her and told her he’d had the naked dream. It was the cut-off date for returns and every time he’d tried to log in his computer code, it told him to get his gear off. His first client came in and he couldn’t look them in the eye or, for obvious reasons, stand up. He’d tried to grab a tissue to put in his lap, but they were all gone. Brook had laughed, despite herself, and started on about Freud and wish-fulfilment. Her lightened mood was momentary, though. ‘Just like your carry-on in the kitchen,’ she’d said. ‘Perhaps you should go and see someone; go and get a referral.’

  In the car, Brook nursed her Thinker’s Thesaurus and a migraine. Ethan was halfway through his mixed lollies before they’d turned off their street. He had his DVD player plugged into the cigarette lighter and his headphones on. Harrison was just content to have them all in the car. Now he was on the road, he felt amenable. His wife was wearing a white singlet top, olive harem pants and a sea-green shawl. Despite the weather, they were having a coastal weekend and she was determined to look the part. Her hair was tousled and she had huge black sunnies on and her feet up on the seat. Her skin was luminous, one of the positive benefits of hibernation. He passed her the water bottle and told her to put the seat back. ‘I have to look out the window,’ she said.

  Brook flicked through the radio stations. Harrison turned the volume up, and she turned it down again.

  ‘And you call me a control freak,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not all deaf.’ She had four stories in her head and didn’t know how to end any of them. She’d stopped reading the arts section of the paper because each favourable review felt like a small death.

  ‘Maybe I should have done nursing,’ she said, in one of her typically irrational segues.

  Harrison’s hands clenched involuntarily on the steering wheel. ‘Just that little blood-phobia thing, though. You’d find that a bit of an issue.’

  ‘They’re always in demand. I think I’d be good at it. There’d be lots of material I could use.’

  He kept her bedside manner and the issue of patient confidentiality to himself and did a quick calculation on another lot of university fees. ‘A new location might inspire you.’

  ‘Oh, of course. It’s that simple, isn’t it? It’s not the location, Harrison, it’s the cusp. The moment. The image of finality that leaves something unanswered. That’s what I need.’ She swivelled around to look at their son and then put her hand on her chest to stem the motion sickness. ‘Eth, turn the noise down. You’ll end up like your father.’

  Harrison hated these discussions. He’d learnt the hard way that Brook didn’t want answers. Not the ones he gave her, anyway. She used to ask him how he’d describe the clouds. Fluffy, he’d say, and she’d roll her eyes. Little grey dumplings, he’d offer. But she wanted something more. Something ominous. Ominous is a good word, he’d say, and she’d say, with no hint of irony, that it’d been done to death.

  Brook puffed out her cheeks, raised her head and exhaled. ‘Barthelme – Edgar at least – thinks that worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.’

  Harrison had no idea who Barthelme was and was pretty keen to keep it that way. He nodded, the only safe option.

  Brook put her hand on her forehead. ‘God, I’m really not feeling well.’

  ‘Stop-the-car sick?’

  ‘Not yet. But I should drive.’

  It was an option that filled Harrison with more dread than a literary discussion. His wife didn’t seem to appreciate basic traffic rules, despite having held a licence for longer than he had. She would veer into the cycle lane, stop short at roundabouts, change lanes when going through them. Not that you could tell her any of this. Her response was always that she’d been driving for years and she’d never had an accident. Plenty of others had though, trying to avoid her. Night driving was the worst. She’d point out a bunny and it would be a plastic bag. A crouching man was a garbage bin. Forensics would be able to find Harrison’s fingerprints all over the dashboard. Sometimes he would let her know she’d almost hit someone and she’d say, ‘It’s not my fault. You know I can’t see in the dark.’

  On the freeway, he yielded. Death at high speed would be quick, at least. He closed his eyes and thought about home. Thought about Mimi. He’d gone to the school reunions, always hoping. All the reminiscing and back-slapping had just made it harder to accept she wasn’t there. As abhorrent as it sounded, he kept a look-out in the death notices for her relatives. She’d have to come back for that.

  The last time he’d casually enquired about Mimi had been at his fifteen-year reunion last year. He’d processed most of the details with caution. He was confident that what the former school captain, Therese, didn’t know, she made up. Mimi’s parents still had the shop, but now it was one of those trendy cafes with prices to
match. Word was that Mimi had spent a bit of time at her aunt’s house in Esperance and then she’d travelled up and down the west coast, flitting in and out of jobs and, no doubt, relationships. She was studying teaching or something like that, and she lived in some sort of commune, an isolated community. Despite posting reunion invitations to Mimi’s parents, Therese had never had a response. Quite rude, Therese thought. Harrison had asked about kids and got a shrug in return, a shrug that made his past rise to the surface like scum on a pond. He’d been sipping bourbon, and at the end of the conversation he’d tried to smile, but he couldn’t stop wincing. Wincing and gulping. Down to the ice. Prodding it with his straw. ‘Sounds like she’s got it together,’ he’d said. ‘If anyone deserves it, it’s Mimi.’ He’d excused himself then and hung out on the deck with the smokers. They were talking about the bloke who’d been a top rugby hooker and then dropped dead in his twenties. Fagging on and talking about death and how you just never know.

  He’d pulled himself onto a stool, and a kid they used to call Simmo, jowly and bleary-eyed in mid-life, sat next to him. Simmo was now a divorced tiler with halitosis. His boy was the same age as Ethan. He was going to get him into union. Harrison nodded and met the inanity with some of his own. Talk about house prices and interest-rate rises. Simmo was interested in tax evasion.

  What Harrison really wanted to ask Simmo was why he’d been such a prick of a kid to him back then. God, he’d felt churned up, sick in the gut about what he and Mimi had done. He was only seventeen, for Christ’s sake. Had to tell someone. Simmo had taken it in, not said much. Told him he’d done the right thing. Then he’d told a mate, who’d told another and soon it was all over the community. Mimi had left home, left school, not long after. She’d been a great student. The teachers couldn’t believe she’d chucked it all in and taken off.

  ‘Harrison, what’ll we do if it rains all weekend?’

  His eyes flickered open. Brook had one arm resting on the console and the cruise control on. ‘I thought we’d go whale spotting,’ he said. ‘Eth’d like that.’