Zigzag Street

by Nick Earls

  I’m still your mother, she says, and I always will be. Your grandmother gave me gratuitous advice until the day she died, and I’m going to be no different.

  So she has become fiendishly full of help, in a bustling, barging, practical way. At certain times (during a war maybe) this is probably a very useful attribute, but it lacks the subtlety required for a routine, suburban personal crisis. And she can see how helpful it isn’t, which only makes things worse.

  I respond instinctively with the petty childish defence of deliberately not doing whatever it is she’s told me to do, and I end up loofa-ing the wardrobe. And after another weekend of renovating, forty-two and a half of the forty-five verandah railings are still unpainted in a particularly piss-weak act of rebellion against her choice of heritage colours.

  Heritage colours, even though the house has never been painted in heritage colours before. My grandparents built it in the 1920s, and as far as I know it’s spent all of its seventy years as a white house with a red roof. But, as my mother said, the market demands heritage colours. So the white will become one of the many kinds of cream, a colour my grandmother would have said made the house look as though it could do with a good wash. And she would have thought even less of the Brunswick green planned for the trim.

  My mother bought the paint and did the first two and a half railings to show me how good it would look, and a few weeks ago she left it to me.

  I put away the unopened can, the unused brush, slip The Queen is Dead back into its sad green sleeve.

  And I can’t believe I pursued that girl for all those years, when it would never have worked.

  3

  So. Monday.

  Five more days of worthy achievement before another wild weekend.

  Greg eats dry food in the mornings. He’s now used to me leaving after breakfast, but the first time I went to work and stayed away all day he was really shitty when I came home in the evening. I have tried to explain the concept of work to him. I have tried to explain the almost inexplicable rewards that are part of working somewhere like Shelton’s (The Shelton Guaranty Company of New York, trading as PJ Shelton Bank, Australia).

  Greg, it’s like this, I’ve told him. At work I’m a very powerful man. And is not power an aphrodisiac? Day of Celibacy 169. I can vaguely remember what an erection was. In my life an aphrodisiac would be as useful as the Swiss Army knife option that removes stones from horses’ hooves. And what sort of a concept is a Swiss Army knife anyway?

  More about the Swiss Army knife

  So how does the Swiss Army get to be the arbiter of standards when it comes to the multi-function pocket knife? What great claims can the Swiss Army make? It’s ducked every war for a hundred and twenty years and it didn’t do that by displaying its knife options. The Swiss Army had carrier pigeons until 1994. A Swiss Army knife should be a complete joke. Like an Austrian aircraft carrier or Nigerian thermal underwear or an Antarctic flower press. Swiss Army and knife should go together like safari and suit.

  Buses head into town along Waterworks Road every couple of minutes at this time of day, so when I’ve eaten some cereal and already bored myself with the concept of work I walk up the hill and catch the next one that comes along.

  The rest of the unit is already in the office. Deb, our admin assistant, says, Hi Ricky, how was your weekend babe? when I walk out of the lift.

  Fine, I tell her. The usual. Bit of renovating. Tennis.

  I’m still not used to ‘Ricky’, even though she’s called me Ricky from the moment she decided she liked me. My name seems to be treated as though it has an almost infinite capacity for abbreviation, and this is not something I welcome. It does not help my sense of identity. Particularly ‘Ricky’, but this goes back to my childhood, when someone else was Ricky, not me.

  The Ricky Kid

  The Ricky Kid, the only kid I knew who was called Ricky by anyone, was Ricky Balaszwecki (pronounced Bal-uh-shef-ski). He was the tiniest kid at school when I was about nine, and whenever anyone had a birthday party Ricky’s parents slicked his hair back (in the years when the wet look was dead) and made him wear a bow tie and blazer. And no-one talked to him because he looked so fragile, like a doll. So we’d play football and cricket and Ricky got into the habit of not being picked for a team and just sitting and watching, looking pale and sad and eating tiny sandwiches and talking to someone’s mother. I expect by now Ricky has learned to accept the role of the complete micro-nerd, wearing bow ties to this day and thinking of them as some personality substitute, and telling himself he would be nothing without them. Alternatively, he may have long ago taken to his parents with an axe. I’m sure it’s kids like Ricky who either pass through life completely unnoticed, or become mass murderers, and the line is probably finer than we realise.

  So I’m still not used to ‘Ricky’ when it comes my way, even when it seems to be meant with some affection, and seems not to mean, Hey micro-nerd, love the tie, kill any parents on the weekend? But maybe I did in fact have the kind of weekend grown-up Rickys have. Maybe Ricky Balaszwecki sat round doing fuck all in the name of renovation, ate half a takeaway meal and talked to a ginger cat. Reminiscing, with the fondness of hindsight, about tiny sandwiches and birthday parties.

  Deb’s weekend was not like that.

  Well, I got really pissed on Friday, she says when I ask what she did, and Saturday I got a new tat. Look.

  She hooks her index finger into her top and pulls it down, proudly revealing the sun rising from her cleavage.

  Did that hurt? I ask her.

  Less than most.

  It’s very nice, I tell her, and the nerdy inadequacy of this remark closes around my neck like a Ricky B bow tie. It’s a good piece of work. Nice use of the contours.

  Thanks babe, she says and grins. Knew you’d like it.

  Hey Rick. Hillary’s voice, coming from her office. She beckons me in and signals me to shut the door. Did she show you the new tattoo?

  Yeah.

  She laughs and holds her head in her hands in mock exasperation. And we all thought the sun shone out of you.

  I’m sure.

  How was your weekend?

  Fine. The usual.

  The usual.

  Yeah.

  Sounds good.

  Yeah.

  I realise I should be saying more, so I try, How was yours?

  Good. Great. Dan’s sitting up now. He sat up on Saturday for the first time. Took us all by surprise.

  He’s a smart kid. Some Saturdays I find it hard to work out how to sit up.

  Just wait. One day you’ll have kids. Sitting up’ll be big.

  I bet it will. I bet it’ll be huge. Only slightly less big than standing, or walking, or cracking the riddle of cold fusion, or brokering a lasting peace in the Middle East.

  So which of those did you do on the weekend?

  Some standing, some walking. And last night I talked to Arafat and he was sounding conciliatory, so I’m hopeful.

  Good boy, Ricky. But Arafat was already conciliatory.

  Maybe, but don’t call me that.

  She laughs. How’s the power station thing going?

  Fine. Fine. I’ll be looking at it today. There was some tension on Friday to do with the slide in the greenback, but I’m trying to make it clear to everyone that that’s not our problem. If there’s a floor at one-oh-five yen it’s okay. Below a hundred and it sinks.

  Below a hundred it sinks. When did you get to be such a straight shooter?

  Hey, it’s how I handle every aspect of my life.

  You know you worry me, don’t you?

  Sure.

  Hillary is a great boss. This occurs to me about half an hour later, when I’ve long forgotten about the power station thing and I’m playing Sammy the Snake on my computer. I only realised what a great boss she was when she took a few months off last year to have Daniel and I filled in for her. She manages to stay in touch with everything, to just the right degree, and manages to stay calm. She makes
being in charge look very easy. I managed only to do both our jobs badly.

  The day she came back I almost, in the moment she walked out of the lift, told her how important she was. I wanted to stop and say to her, You don’t know what you mean to me. You don’t know that without you here I couldn’t survive. But that would have been too strange for both of us, so I just said, It’s good to have you back, with a kind of forced wry smile.

  This morning Sammy the Snake has my measure. I have an inclination to make a few personal phone calls, but I resist and I try to look at the power station thing. But today the only observation I feel I can make with any confidence about it is that there are far too many pages. I actually hate joint ventures. They involve too many companies, too many hundreds of millions of dollars, too many governments, too many laws. Too many lawyers, and today I just don’t feel like being one of them. And I certainly don’t feel like a straight shooter. What does she mean by that?

  I make myself coffee and sit drinking it slowly, gazing at the pile of overloaded manila folders in front of me.

  Hillary is talking to me now. I miss the first part but I hear the bit where she says, Rick, things don’t seem good.

  Well, they have been better.

  I’m worried that you’re not looking after yourself.

  Did my mother just call you?

  Before I had Daniel your shirts looked ironed.

  I just haven’t organised an ironing person as part of my new arrangements yet.

  And this makes my crap situation sound surprisingly special. New arrangements. It sounds as though I’ve made a lifestyle choice.

  You could organise an iron though. I’m sure you’ve even got one. I mean, it doesn’t bother me that your shirts are never ironed. That’s not it. It’s just that some days you don’t even seem aware of it. You don’t seem happy at all. I’m worried about you.

  Thanks. I’ll be okay.

  If you aren’t, if you ever aren’t and there’s anything I can do, make sure you let me know.

  Yeah. Thanks.

  So she leaves me with my half a cup of coffee and my stack of documents. She’s great. And she’s worried about me. She’s confident, she’s smart, and she’s a babe, really. She’s married, she’s my manager. I can’t understand some of my thought processes. They seem as though they’re out to harm me.

  She’s confident, she’s smart and she has a perfectly normal nice-person’s interest in my wellbeing. That’s it. That’s what’s happening.

  I sit staring through a powerful blankness at the calendar that runs down the edge of my 94/95 financial year desk planner, and I tell myself to put the crap of the last six months out of my head, and to get back to the job I’m here for.

  Fin Year 94/95: the first two quarters, a summary

  The Dow climbs towards 4000. The AUD struggles along in the mid-seventies against the USD, which cops a hiding from the Deutschmark. Hillary goes on parental leave. The pressures of work increase exponentially. I do not cope well. Anna Hiller, my residential partner of several years, unilaterally decides that the course of my life will differ markedly from that which I expected. She tells me she’s leaving. One night, like many other nights, we buy takeaway on the way home. We eat it and I can see she’s tense and I ask her what’s wrong and she says that she cares for me deeply and that I should understand that, but she’s leaving. I beg, plead, cry, etcetera. If it’s desperate and seems worth a shot, I do it, all that same evening. But to no avail. She tells me she has a new job in Melbourne, starting in a couple of weeks. She organises the division of property, the termination of our lease. So very soon I live with my parents. I call her in Melbourne, in the end probably far more often than a normal person would. She stops taking my calls. My grandmother, to whom I am very close, dies. I can’t stand living with my parents. They eat dinner at five-thirty. When I go out at night they don’t sleep at all. They worry that my failed relationship reflects their own inadequacies. My mother moves into crisis mode. I have to leave before I start wearing bow ties to birthday parties and slicking my hair down and we all know what that means.

  And it’s almost impossible to sleep in a bed alone, when it’s not what you’re used to any more. Any bed now wakes me with emptiness. Leaves me lying there thinking, if you care for me deeply, why did you leave?

  The power station thing. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what I’ve got to get to now. I should call New York.

  I should call New York but it’s Sunday evening in New York.

  I turn on my computer and open Sammy the Snake.

  4

  And so passes another day of minimal accomplishment.

  I make limited progress with the power station thing, and I’m secretly hoping someone else will find a reason to trash it before I have to understand it fully. Secretly wishing the US dollar ill.

  When I get home there’s a message on the answering machine, and I can tell just how well I’m coping when I still have to deal with the fleeting hope that it’ll be Anna, telling me she got it wrong.

  But it’s my mother, telling me she drove past today and didn’t notice much renovating, Richard (note the use of the full name for disciplinary reasons), and the garden’s beginning to look like a jungle.

  I give Greg his dinner and while he’s eating I wonder if he’s bored all day, now that he lives with someone who goes out to work. I wonder if I’m being as attentive as I should be, or could be.

  So, telling myself it’s a small step on the road to renovation, I perform a minor task of tidying with him in mind. I clean out my sock drawer. I take all my old socks and I stuff them into one and I knot the end. I find a fat green Nikko and draw a face on the sock, a smiling, simpleton’s face with a lazy snake tongue, and I take it to him and tell him I feel bad about abandoning him so often, so I’ve made him a sock friend. I tell him that this friend will be non-judgemental and will always be there for him, and that its name is Purvis. Now, where that came from I don’t know.

  Of course, it concerns me that the creation of Purvis the Sock Friend is the pinnacle of my day’s accomplishments, and I only feel worse when I try to tell myself that it’s better than nothing.

  I introduce Greg to Purvis and they seem to get on. I now notice that Greg was so bored before Purvis came along that he went out and made friends with about a thousand fleas. I’m sure he never had fleas before I lived here.

  I re-heat my Baan Thai leftovers a little too aggressively in the microwave and seem to enamel some of the sauce to the plate. I eat every part of it a fork can lift and I decide I can figure out how to get the plate clean later.

  Tonight, there is no time for renovation. Tonight there is tennis, Jeff Ross, Freddie Stuart, Gerry Venster and me, and a Queensland Uni tennis court from eight to eleven.

  Jeff’s there when I arrive, sitting on a bench outside the tennis centre and wearing, as always, his black cap with ACE in blue across the front. Not that this cap should be taken as a sign that the ace is in any way part of his tennis repertoire. Jeff manages to ace someone on an almost annual basis. The cap says more about the impressive hint of cruelty in the humour of its purchaser, his wife Sally Gore, who presented it to him on his twenty-ninth birthday, almost a year ago. While Jeff happily missed the point and wore it proudly throughout dinner, someone asked her if it had been too expensive to get the shop to put GROUND STROKE on it, in order to give due acknowledgement to his finest, dull, relentless weapon.

  And the ACE cap cuts deeper than that. Jeff has a very dubious story, set some long time in the past (before we met him), that involves a fleeting appearance at the fringes of serious tennis in some crap capacity in some nowhere tournament where someone thoughtlessly gave him the wild card that will allow him to bore his friends for the rest of his life with the story of his fight through to the semis (or maybe even the final) as he played his best tennis ever, until he dislocated his shoulder hitting a smash. And he blames the subsequent shoulder repair, from which he does at least have a scar, f
or taking the power right out of his game, and making him the person on court least likely to serve an ace. So the ACE cap in fact mocks the whole unlikely story of his moment in the sun, not just the grim play of the present.

  He knows we hate him for all of that grimness, for the grinding, talentless way he almost never loses singles, by off-setting a visibly low level of ability with a very low error rate. He has the mental game of a chess champion, and probably the physical game of a chess champion too. But against flamboyant recklessness he wins almost every time.

  But some of this is probably unfair. His tennis is no different to the way he plays the rest of his life. He is not a risk taker. I’ve challenged him about this, and he didn’t seem challenged at all. And my tennis is known for its long periods of complete crap, punctuated by flashes of a very random glory.

  G’day Miniature, he says when he sees me.

  He says it loud enough to make people look around and to be confused by the person of a very standard height who is coming their way and responding to the name. And I’m not going to tell them that it’s one of his jokes. That when your parents call you Richard they leave you open to all kinds of names. Miniature, though, is one of the more obscure, and is a fond abbreviation of Jeff’s invention, Miniature Dick.

  From him this is no surprise at all, as penis size seems to figure prominently in his thinking, we suspect because his own penis is very small. This was substantiated at a dinner party once when Sal said something like, Well, how big is average? Three inches? and, far too late, declared herself to be a child of the metric system, and asked how big inches were. By the time she was saying that her guess was that inches were a very large unit of measurement, perhaps the same as a cubit, she was already looking only at Jeff, her face a mask of horrendous apology, as though a bad secret was out. So now whenever he makes remarks about other people’s likely anatomy, we just show him three fingers, and he realises he is not speaking from a position of strength. Or at least length.